Forum Discussion

wonga's avatar
wonga
Continued Contributor
10 years ago

Connect to OBIEE RPD using ODBC Connection

I'm trying to connect to the repository for OBIEE using an ODBC connection and the list of subject areas appears to load in Power BI, but I am unable to load any data into Power BI in order to make v...
Need Help
arify's avatar
arify
Microsoft Employee
10 years ago

Hi wonga, this looks like a new bug. Can you please send us a frown? We'll fix this soon. The reason is, (at least) one of the columns is really big. Do you have a guess which column is the big one?

 

In the meantime, I can give you a work around to remove that column for now (hopefully you don't need that column immediately) :

  1. Open your table in the Query Editor & get the error
  2. In the ribbon, there's a Keep Rows button. Click "Keep Top Rows" in there and enter 0 to the "Number of rows" field. Click OK.
  3. Now you should be seeing the columns. Right click on the column you think is the big one and click "Remove".
  4. On the right side where you see the "Applied Steps", click the X next to the step that removes the rows (if you're using English PowerBI Desktop, the step's name is probably "Kept First Rows").
  5. It'll give you a warning. Click "Delete" on the prompt. Now you should be seeing your table without that column.

 

Please let me know how it went :)

Thanks

 

wonga's avatar
wonga
Continued Contributor
10 years ago

arify I am not able to load any tables when connecting through ODBC. After I input the query as you laid out, it gives me that error regarding array dimensions. 

 

The "Keep Rows Button" is greyed out, see below screenshot for more information. A frown was sent on 7/25 regarding this issue.

 

 

 

Thanks.

  • arify's avatar
    arify
    Microsoft Employee
    10 years ago

    wonga , I believe the stack trace you sent us was from the previous attempt (where HierarchicalNavigation was set to true).

     

    Can you please give me the stack trace of the latest error? (when HierarchicalNavigation is set to false)

     

    Thanks

  • wonga's avatar
    wonga
    Continued Contributor
    10 years ago

    arify I just sent a frown with the latest error. Mentioned your PBI community ID in the e-mail, thanks.

  • arify's avatar
    arify
    Microsoft Employee
    10 years ago

    wonga Thanks, I received it. This error is happening in somewhere I wouldn't expect it to happen. I'm wondering if it's a driver issue.

     

    Can you try this?

     

     

    let
    Source = Odbc.Query("dsn=YOURDSN", "select * from YOURTABLENAME")
in
    Source

    Thanks

     

  • wonga's avatar
    wonga
    Continued Contributor
    10 years ago

    arify

     

    The ODBC connection is to an OBIEE Application Server I think, so I'm not sure what I should be putting in for table name.

     

    I would be selecting items from the presentation layer which would consist of Subject Areas.

     

  • arify's avatar
    arify
    Microsoft Employee
    10 years ago

    wonga, do you have another tool to connect your OBIEE server to see the table names? Maybe you can see what tables you need from there, and then type that in PBI?

  • wonga's avatar
    wonga
    Continued Contributor
    10 years ago

    arify

     

    I do have a tool to do just that, but the point of using this ODBC connection is to avoid having to reference table names and instead reference the subject areas (which contain all the aggregates). If I were to reference the table names, I would just connect directly to the Oracle Database using the built-in connector.

     

    Interesting thing is that before in June's release of PBI Desktop, I was able to connect to the Application Server using ODBC but like wbsissonii mentioned, no data shows up, only the names of the subject areas.

  • arify's avatar
    arify
    Microsoft Employee
    10 years ago

    wongain that case, you might need to wait for the fix to be released. Meanwhile, can you still do that just so we can diagnose the problem correctly and make sure we're not missing another problem?

     

    Thanks

  • arify's avatar
    arify
    Microsoft Employee
    10 years ago

    wonga, we have another customer who is using the same driver & datasource but they aren't getting this failure. In Excel, there are 2 things you can use to connect to ODBC, under Data tab, they're called "Microsoft Query" and "Data Connection Wizard". Can you try to connect with them and let us know if that works?

  • wonga's avatar
    wonga
    Continued Contributor
    10 years ago

    arify I only had 32-Bit versions of Office to test with and it isn't able to load any tables (says something along the lines of "There are no visible tables"). There might be something in the Oracle RPD that is not exposing the tables to 3rd party applications possibly...