Connect Power BI Desktop to OBIEE Subject Areas using ODBC DSN Connection - Step-by-Step User Guide

Modified on Wed, 10 May 2023 at 09:06 PM

Following is a general tutorial for connecting from Power BI Desktop Edition to OBIEE Subject Areas through BI Connector as ODBC connection.


Pre-requisites

 

  1. Follow the Step-by-Step Installation Guide for BI Connector Desktop Edition for Microsoft Power BI to install and configure BI Connector in your PC.
  2. If you are using Microsoft Power BI Desktop June 2017 update or later, please refer to the following article to enable BI Connector in the Power BI Desktop.

    Power BI: BI Connector does not show up in Power BI Get Data Screen


Step 1: Launch Power BI. Select Get Data option.




Alternately, You can select Get Data Option ,




 Step 2: In the Get Data dialog, scroll down and select ODBC.



Step 3: Now select the DSN name that you configured for Subject Area after installing BI Connector. Advanced Options are not necessary. 


NOTE: Create the DSN only under System DSN for connecting from PowerBI to BI Connector.



Click OK.


Step 4: Navigator window will open. Click on the Database name to connect to the required database.



Step 5: On Successful Connection, list of subject areas will be listed. Select the required table under any subject area from the list.



Step 6: The Subject area table can be previewed on the right side just like a Table. Select one or more tables from the list and click on edit.



Merge Tables 


Step 1:  After selecting the tables and entering into Edit mode in Query Editor, wait for the tables to be loaded.


Step 2: Click on any one of the dimension tables and select Merge Queries option from Merge Queries menu at the top right corner. 


Note: Before selecting Merge Queries, you can apply filters to the tables as needed, so that the tables can be loaded faster. 



Step 3: A Merge pop up window will appear and the table selected in Step 2 will be displayed by default. Select the GZID column from the table to use as a common column to merge the tables.



Step 4: Select the drop down below the table to select the second table that needs to be merged to the first table.


Step 5: Now the second table also will be loaded. Select the GZID column from the second table also to use as a common column to merge the tables.



Step 6: Select "Left Outer (all from first, matching from second)" join kind from the drop down and click on OK. 

  

Step 7: Now the second table will be merged to the first table. You can click on the second table name and select only required columns needed for visualization or keep all the columns. Click OK.



Step 8: Now the columns of the second table will be expanded. You can repeat from Step 1 to Step 7 to merge all the necessary tables to one table and finally Click on Close & Apply button.





Create Visualization


Step 1:  Merged table will be loaded. You can drag and drop the columns from the table.   Now you have created your first Power BI Visualization for OBIEE data.  Congratulations!



If you have any questions or issues creating a report, we are just a click away. Contact us at support@biconnector.com or file a ticket at our support portal.