Access Wave Financial Data as OData Feeds in Tableau



Use the Tableau Desktop business intelligence tool to connect to Wave Financial data using the API Server.

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

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 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 Wave Financial Data Visualizations

Follow the steps below to create data visualizations based on the remote Wave Financial 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/Invoices
  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 Wave Financial data, right-click under the table name in the Data section of the dashboard and select the View Data option. The Wave Financial data will appear in Tableau.

Ready to get started?

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CData API Server