Visualize Wave Financial Data in TIBCO Spotfire through OData

OData is a major protocol enabling real-time communication among cloud-based, mobile, and other online applications. The CData API Server, when paired with the ADO.NET Provider for Wave Financial, provides Wave Financial data (or data from 200+ other ADO.NET Providers) to OData consumers like TIBCO Spotfire. This article shows how to use the API Server and Spotfire's built-in support for OData to access Wave Financial data in real time.

Set Up the API Server

Follow the steps below to begin producing secure Wave Financial 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 Wave Financial

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

Connect using the API Token

You can connect to Wave Financial by specifying the APIToken You can obtain an API Token using the following steps:

1. Log in to your Wave account and navigate to "Manage Applications" in the left pane.
2. Select the application that you would like to create a token for. You may need to create an application first.
3. Click the "Create token" button to generate an APIToken.

Connect using OAuth

If you wish, you can connect using the embedded OAuth credentials. See the Help documentation for more information.

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 Wave Financial entities you want to allow the API Server access to by clicking Settings -> Resources.

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 Data Visualizations on External Wave Financial Data

1. Open Spotfire and click Add Data Tables -> OData.
2. In the OData Connection dialog, enter the following information:
   • Service URL: Enter the API Server's OData endpoint. For example: http://localhost:8032/api.rsc
   • Authentication Method: Select Username and Password.
   • Username: Enter the username of an API Server user. You can create API users on the Security tab of the administration console.
   • Password: Enter the authtoken of an API Server user.
   
3. Select the tables and columns you want to add to the dashboard. This example uses Invoices.
4. If you want to work with the live data, click the Keep Data Table External option. This option enables your dashboards to reflect changes to the data in real time.

   If you want to load the data into memory and process the data locally, click the Import Data Table option. This option is better for offline use or if a slow network connection is making your dashboard less interactive.

5. After adding tables, the Recommended Visualizations wizard is displayed. When you select a table, Spotfire uses the column data types to detect number, time, and category columns. This example uses DueDate in the Numbers section and Id in the Categories section.

After adding several visualizations in the Recommended Visualizations wizard, you can make other modifications to the dashboard. For example, you can apply a filter: After clicking the Filter button, the available filters for each query are displayed in the Filters pane.