How to Setup Power BI OData Connector? | 6 Easy Steps

Business Intelligence (BI) is an ever-evolving technology that is dominating all organizations across the globe. BI enables organizations to swiftly extract meaningful insights from historical and current data in order to make strategic decisions. The BI tools analyze big data sets from many sources and deliver insights in visually appealing ways that are easy to grasp and distribute. Today, most organizations are making use of the strengths of this technology to grow in their respective fields. Power BI is one such tool that aids in making complicated business decisions. It is a robust BI software that provides a powerful Data Modeling solution. It also helps you create dynamic dashboards and reports by converting data from several data sources.

In this blog, we will learn about OData Feed, one of the data sources available in Power BI, and how to configure the Power BI OData Feed Connector.

Prerequisites

• Basic knowledge about Business Intelligence solutions.

Understanding Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft’s Power BI is an Interactive Data Visualization software application aimed at business intelligence. Thierry D’Hers and Amir Netz of Microsoft’s SQL Server Reporting Services Team came up with the idea for this software. In 2010, the project was named Project Crescent by Ron George. Later in 2011, Project Crescent was made available for public download and SQL Server Codename Denali. 

The Power BI is a collection of different software applications, services, and connectors that work together to transform a variety of data sources into logical, visually appealing, and interactive insights.

Power BI offers Cloud-based BI services known as Power BI Services as well as a desktop-based interface known as “Power BI Desktop.” It includes data preparation, data discovery, and interactive dashboards, among its data warehouse features.

Features of Microsoft Power BI

• The Power BI Desktop and the Power BI Service provide office-like usability, allowing organizations to get started fast by utilizing pre-built reports or creating their own.
• It also assists in managing, administering, and safeguarding data throughout its life cycle, enterprise-grade security, and information protection.
• Datasets, Power BI applications, and reports may be certified, allowing everyone in an organization to access and use the most authoritative, up-to-date data quickly.
• Microsoft’s Power BI uses Artificial Intelligence visualizations to enable more individuals to uncover insights to help them make better decisions.

What is Power BI Desktop?

Power BI Desktop is a well-known open-source Windows-based application and can be installed on any local desktop or laptop. It’s a key tool for consuming, cleaning, and converting data from a variety of sources. It can also analyze the data and visualize insights in the form of reports.

With Power BI Desktop, users can connect to a variety of data sources and integrate them into a Data Model. It also includes data preparation, data discovery, and interactive dashboards as part of its data warehouse functionality.

Features of Power BI Desktop

• The Power BI Desktop application lets users construct a Data Model, transform, and clean the data.
• It also helps in creating visuals that provide visual representations of the data, such as charts or graphs.
• It allows users to create reports that are collections of graphics on one or more report pages.

Installing Power BI Desktop

One of the simplest ways to install the Power BI Desktop application is to download it directly from the Power BI website.

Technical Requirements to Download Power BI Desktop

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, and Windows 11.
• Internet Explorer 10 or greater.
• .NET 4.6.2 or later.
• Application is available for 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) platforms.

Steps to download Power BI Desktop Directly

Step 1: Go to Power BI Desktop. Choose your preferred language and click Download.

Step 2: Select the installation file according to your system requirements and click Next.

Step 3: After clicking Next, the following page will appear. You can now see the downloaded file in your system. Open the file.

Step 4: Now, select the language you want and click Next.

Step 5: Click on Next until you arrive at the following screen. Accept the terms and hit Next.

Step 6: Choose the location where you wish to install the application. Click Next > Install (the installation process will begin).

Step 7: Once the installation process is completed, click Finish.

Step 8: The welcome screen will appear as soon as you launch the Power BI Desktop. Sign in, and now, you are ready to create reports or Data Models. You can also collaborate and share them with others.

How to Connect to Power BI OData Feeds?

Power BI supports an extensive range of data sources such as Flat Files, SQL Database, OData Feed, Blank Query, Azure Cloud platform, Online Services, Blank Query, and many more. Users can easily connect any data to the Power BI to visualize and create reports.

The data source is the route to the data you wish to work with, such as the path to a file on a hard disk and the URL to a Cloud-based database. The data acquired from various sources is connected with Power BI, allowing you to aggregate it into datasets and create unified reports and charts by cleaning and converting it.

Once such Data Source that Power BI supports is OData. You can use the Power BI OData Connector to use this source.

What is OData?

The OData is widely known as metadata, a machine-readable representation of the APIs’ Data Model, which can build powerful generic client proxies and tools. OData also includes guidance for monitoring changes, building reusable process functions/actions, and making asynchronous/batch queries.

Open Data Protocol (OData) is an ISO/IEC-approved, OASIS standard web protocol for querying and updating data. Microsoft initiated OData Feed in 2007. The Microsoft Open Specification Promise covers versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. OASIS standardized Version 4.0, which was released in March 2014.

OData defines best practices for consuming and building well-defined REST APIs such as HTTP, XML, AtomPub, and JSON. The protocol enables Web clients to publish and edit resources identifiable by URLs and described in a Data Model using basic HTTP messages.

How to Connect to Power BI OData Feeds?

Before getting started, check if you have the Power BI Desktop application installed in your system. it allows users to connect to and use the Power BI OData feed in Power BI Desktop.

Steps to Connect Power BI OData Feed to Power BI Desktop

Step 1: Once you have the Power BI Desktop setup ready, click on the Get data and then Power BI Odata feed.

Step 2: Now, in the Power BI OData Feed window, type or paste the OData feed URL of your choice into the box, and select OK.

Step 3: Select the level in order to apply the settings. Click on Connect.

Step 4: The Navigator window as shown below appears. You can now select as many tables as you want to import.

Step 5: After selecting the data that you wish to import, the following screen will appear. Here, you can select the Transform Data option to open Power Query Editor. This query transforms the data from the Power BI OData Feed before importing it into the Power BI Desktop.

Alternatively, you may click the Load button to import all of the data elements from the left pane.

Step 6: After that, Power BI Desktop makes the selected tables and other data elements available in the Fields pane, which can be found on the right side of Power BI Desktop’s Reports view.

You can now utilize data from the Power BI OData stream to build visuals, reports, or interact with any other data you wish to connect to and import, such as other Excel workbooks, databases, or any other data source, in Power BI Desktop.

How to Create Reports using Power BI OData Feeds?

From the Fields pane, select the data to visualize. Then, from the Visualization pane, choose the type of visualization method of your choice for the data.

Conclusion

Today, the majority of organizations that work on business intelligence projects utilize the Power BI Desktop application connected with the OData to develop reports and subsequently share them within the organization.

In this blog, we learned about the OData, one of the data sources available in the Power BI, and further, we learned how to connect Odata to the Power BI Desktop. We also saw how to create a report in Power BI. You can integrate many such platforms using Hevo Data.

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Share your experience of learning about Power BI OData Feed Connector! Let us know in the comments section below!

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