DirectQuery DataDirect ODBC drivers in Power BI

In Power BI, by default any ODBC driver or some of the data sources like Salesforce you don’t get to DirectQuery them. You would have to load the data before you can start visualizing the data. In this article you will learn how you can DirectQuery any datasource with the help of Progress DataDirect ODBC drivers.

To enable DirectQuery, Microsoft provides a Data Connector SDK and using it you would have to create an extension that enables DirectQuery. But this can be tricky if you are not sure how to do this. Don’t worry, Progress DataDirect has got you covered.

In this article, let’s see how you can enable DirectQuery for Hive using Progress DataDirect Hive ODBC driver. You can use this same method for any DataDirect ODBC drivers, we will provide you with Power BI connectors that enables DirectQuery for any datasource.

1. Download Progress DataDirect Hive ODBC driver from here.
2. Install the Hive driver by running the Setup.exe. This is a simple installation, if you go through default installation steps.
3. After the DataDirect Hive ODBC driver has been installed, open ODBC Administrator to configure the connection.
4. Click on Add and Choose “DataDirect X.X Apache Hive Protocol” driver.
5. Configure the driver as shown below
   
   
   
   

1. Download the Power BI Data Connector for DataDirect ODBC drivers from GitHub
2. On your PC, Go to Documents and create a folder named Microsoft Power BI Desktop.
3. Under the folder Microsoft Power BI Desktop, create another folder Custom Connectors
4. Copy the DataDirectODBC.mez to the folder Custom Connectors
5. Enable the Custom data connectors preview feature in Power BI Desktop (under File | Options and settings | Custom data connectors)
   
   
   

Note: This extension is not production ready, please contact us for the stable version.

If your Power BI is already running, save your work and Restart Power BI for the extension to show up.

1. In Power BI, click on Get Data -> All -> DataDirectODBC. Choose it and you should now see a form as shown below where it will ask for DSN name. Also under Data Connectivity mode -> Choose DirectQuery
   
   
2. Authenticate using your credentials under Basic and Click on Connect
   
   
   
   
3. Choose your database, select table and click on Load to continue
   
   
   
   
4. You should now see that DirectQuery has been enabled for querying DataDirect ODBC driver in Power BI footer as shown below
   
   

I hope this article helped you on how you can Direct Query Progress DataDirect ODBC drivers.  All the Progress DataDirect ODBC drivers like Salesforce, SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Eloqua etc.., and the drivers you can build using OpenAccess SDK are fully compliant to ODBC standards, and are internally certified to work with Power BI. Feel free to try these for your projects and if you have any questions or issues, feel free to contact us.