Access Adobe Commerce Data as OData Feeds in Tableau



Use the Tableau Desktop business intelligence tool to connect to Adobe Commerce data using the API Server.

The CData API Server, when paired with the ADO.NET Provider for Adobe Commerce (or any of 200+ other ADO.NET Providers), provides Adobe Commerce data as OData Web services. This article will explain how to use the API Server to provide the underlying connectivity to Adobe Commerce data in Tableau's business intelligence tool.

Set Up the API Server

Follow the steps below to begin producing secure Adobe Commerce OData services:

Deploy

The API Server runs on your own server. On Windows, you can deploy using the stand-alone server or IIS. On a Java servlet container, drop in the API Server WAR file. See the help documentation for more information and how-tos.

The API Server is also easy to deploy on Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2, and Heroku.

Connect to Adobe Commerce

After you deploy the API Server and the ADO.NET Provider for Adobe Commerce, provide authentication values and other connection properties needed to connect to Adobe Commerce by clicking Settings -> Connections and adding a new connection in the API Server administration console.

Adobe Commerce uses the OAuth 1 authentication standard. To connect to the Adobe Commerce REST API, obtain values for the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties by registering an app with your Adobe Commerce system. See the "Getting Started" section in the help documentation for a guide to obtaining the OAuth values and connecting.

You will also need to provide the URL to your Adobe Commerce system. The URL depends on whether you are using the Adobe Commerce REST API as a customer or administrator.

  • Customer: To use Adobe Commerce as a customer, make sure you have created a customer account in the Adobe Commerce homepage. To do so, click Account -> Register. You can then set the URL connection property to the endpoint of your Adobe Commerce system.

  • Administrator: To access Adobe Commerce as an administrator, set CustomAdminPath instead. This value can be obtained in the Advanced settings in the Admin menu, which can be accessed by selecting System -> Configuration -> Advanced -> Admin -> Admin Base URL.

    If the Use Custom Admin Path setting on this page is set to YES, the value is inside the Custom Admin Path text box; otherwise, set the CustomAdminPath connection property to the default value, which is "admin".

When you configure the connection, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

You can then choose the Adobe Commerce entities you want to allow the API Server to access by clicking Settings -> Resources.

Additionally, click Settings -> Server and set the Default Format to XML (Atom) for compatibility with Tableau.

Authorize API Server Users

After determining the OData services you want to produce, authorize users by clicking Settings -> Users. The API Server uses authtoken-based authentication and supports the major authentication schemes. Access can also be restricted based on IP address; by default only connections to the local machine are allowed. You can authenticate as well as encrypt connections with SSL.

Create Real-Time Adobe Commerce Data Visualizations

Follow the steps below to create data visualizations based on the remote Adobe Commerce data:

  1. In Tableau, select 'Connect to data'. In the 'On a server' section, click OData.

  2. In the resulting wizard, enter the URL of the OData endpoint for the API Server. Append the name of the table you want to access to the OData entry URL. For example:

    https://your-server/api.rsc/Products
  3. Select the 'Use a Username and Password' option and enter the username and password of a user who has access to the API Server.
  4. Tableau uses the table metadata exposed by the API Server to detect dimension and measure columns.

  5. To view the Adobe Commerce data, right-click under the table name in the Data section of the dashboard and select the View Data option. The Adobe Commerce data will appear in Tableau.

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CData API Server