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rleir17-Peridot
17-Peridot
September 14, 2022
Question

Tableau connector for WRS ODATA REST API

  • September 14, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 3432 views

Team, Would it make sense to use Tableau to create a dashboard that displays Windchill stats? Tableau would possibly access the WC ODATA REST API using https://www.tableau.com/developer/tools/web-data-connector. Has anyone got a start on developing a connection like this? Otherwise I would start from scratch. What would be the biggest challenges in this project? cheers -- Rick

 

3 replies

R
rleir17-PeridotAuthor
17-Peridot
September 14, 2022

Windchill Help says:

Support for OData
The framework is designed to support OData Protocol V4. All aspects of OData standard are not currently supported by Windchill REST Services. PTC intends to support minimum OData V4 compliance in subsequent releases of Windchill REST Services.
 
 
I tried to use Tableau connector to connect to our Windchill 12.0.2 https://domain.com/Windchill/servlet/odata/
and got this error:
 
Error code 7C19CF64   Unsupported format. OData JSON support requires OData version 4.
 
Tableau connector does not think Windchill supports OData version 4. How can I fix this?
Thanks -- Rick
R
rleir17-PeridotAuthor
17-Peridot
September 14, 2022

Aha, that URL should be:

 

https://domain.com/Windchill/servlet/odata/v6/ChangeMgmt

Now Tableau and Windchill are talking! 

A
aaronjlarson14-Alexandrite
14-Alexandrite
September 14, 2022

Biggest challenge I see with using the REST for reporting is that not everything is available.  I've been using PowerBI to report Windchill stats, but based on Query Builder reports rather than REST.  QueryBuilder is much more tailorable to the specific reporting need and ensures you don't have any gaps in data availability like with the REST framework.  As the "rest" of the REST framework is fleshed out I would consider re-evaluating, but for our needs it typically isn't enough.

    A
    aacciano314-Alexandrite
    14-Alexandrite
    September 15, 2022

    @aaronjlarson 

    We are trying to use PowerBI as well.

    Are you using SQL queries and connect to the production Windchill DB or did you setup table replication and point PowerBI to the replicated DB?

    A
    aaronjlarson14-Alexandrite
    14-Alexandrite
    September 15, 2022
    No - we do it by creating a QueryBuilder that is set to return a CSV. We use the source call in PowerBI of

    source = Csv.Document(Web.Contents("[your windchill url for the report].....

    There are some other nuances related to authentication depending on what you're ultimately looking to do.

    Using this method we are able to pass parameters, if necessary, to the QB report call (must be accounted for in the QB design), and also use scheduled refreshes in the PBI service. We use this method to feed datasets directly as well as dataflows.

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      R
      rleir17-PeridotAuthor
      17-Peridot
      September 29, 2022

      Team

      Sorry for bumping this question up again. Maybe we need to use the Tabpy project, because the Odata connector does not seem to let us do the '$expand=' that we need? And we would need to build a WC specific layer on top of TabPy, or is there a simpler way?

      cheers -- Rick

      https://github.com/tableau/TabPy

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