Retrieving data from analytic blend

dbeavon
Contributor

There is a new column-store storage engine for reporting out of Onestream called "Analytic Blend". I have been examining the related documentation, and hoping to find an API that would allow this engine to return data for ad-hoc queries. We have custom processes that require CPM data from onestream. These processes would greatly benefit from the ability to retrieve query results from Analytic Blend. 


Is there any technical documentation that would help software developers to interact with that column-store data? I have the "BI Blend Design and Reference Guide" for XF 6.3.0, but no other resources beyond that.

 

That document primarily describes how to prepare the Blend output database. But it doesn't describe how client applications might use the results. Can I assume this is because the because the database is standard Microsoft technology, (ie. that it only requires standard SQL knowledge/skills)? Can I assume that querying data from this Blend database would be fully supported? It would be very useful if our custom client processes were allowed to interact directly with the external Blend database.

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It stores the data in a SQL database. You can then make the 3rd party apps to go against that. However, you lose the little security that OS allows you to have on the BI Blend tables (workflows and entities) if you go that route.

Now on a cloud instance, I don't think that gets exposed. You are now at the mercy of REST APIs and PowerShell. However, I found out that regular OS users cannot use Powershell. I assume that is the case with REST API as well.

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It stores the data in a SQL database. You can then make the 3rd party apps to go against that. However, you lose the little security that OS allows you to have on the BI Blend tables (workflows and entities) if you go that route.

Now on a cloud instance, I don't think that gets exposed. You are now at the mercy of REST APIs and PowerShell. However, I found out that regular OS users cannot use Powershell. I assume that is the case with REST API as well.

@ckattookaran Thanks.  We are running Power BI on premise.

It sounds like the SQL database is structured in a more "user-friendly" way , (and that querying these tables is fully supported).

I had heard that the core/internal SQL tables for the OS cubes aren't really intended to be used by client applications, so I didn't even start down that path.

Quick follow up question.... I think OneStream has started working on a mechanism to report from Microsoft Power BI (ie. via a "custom connector").  Do you happen to know which of their own technologies onestream will be using for that?  Will it use their own REST API?  Will it require the preparation of Analytic Blend?  Whichever approach they use will need to be fast and robust; and it may work well for similar integrations with other types of client-applications.

I've no idea. I've heard about the connector. Not sure when it is coming (or whether it is coming).