Connect Microsoft Analytics and Business Intelligence Tools to Octo
Sam Habiel
Introduction
Features for Octo to be desirable in enterprise environments include support for:
- SQL Views to simplify complex underlying data relationships to convey meaningful information
- Paginated reports for administrative and regulatory reports
- Dashboards for real-time analytics
Given the popularity of the Microsoft Windows ecosystem, the set of tools PowerBI Desktop, PowerBI Report Builder, and Excel have a large user base and between them provide the needed functionality. The PowerBI tools integrate with Windows Authentication, connecting the ability to view reports with a user’s identity.
ALL SAMPLE DATA SHOWN HERE IS FICTITIOUS.
PowerBI Desktop
With PowerBI Desktop you can create web-based interactive dashboards and front-line applications for decision making. The following screenshots show the creation of a sample report of allergy data in a VistA application. Rocto supports the standard PostgreSQL ODBC driver.
FIGURE 1: ODBC CONNECTION DIALOG
FIGURE 2: SELECT DATA SOURCE FROM POWERBI
FIGURE 3: NAVIGATOR: NAVIGATE TABLES
FIGURE 4: NAVIGATOR: TABLE DATA PREVIEW
FIGURE 5: NAVIGATOR: VIEWS
FIGURE 6: TRANSFORM DATA
FIGURE 7: TRANSFORM DATA: CHANGE DATA TYPE
FIGURE 8: RELATIONSHIPS VIEW
FIGURE 9: SAMPLE REPORT
PowerBI Reports Builder
PowerBI Reports Builder creates reports to be printed or shared as PDF documents.
FIGURE 10: REPORT SOURCE
FIGURE 11: REPORT QUERY DEFINITION
FIGURE 12: REPORT DESIGNER
FIGURE 13: FINAL REPORT
Excel
Excel is perhaps the most popular spreadsheet. The visual database tools work well with Octo. Here are some screenshots illustrating various operations with the visual database tools.
FIGURE 14: MICROSOFT QUERY LINKING PATIENT AND PATIENT ALLERGY DATA
FIGURE 15: DATA CONNECTION WIZARD SHOWING ALL THE VISTA TABLES
FIGURE 16: EXCEL SINGLE TABLE DATA
FIGURE 17: EXCEL GRAPHING DATA FROM PATIENT FILE
Conclusion
If you have PowerBI Desktop, PowerBI Report Builder and Excel on your computer, you can use the Docker Octo VistA VeHU image at https://hub.docker.com/r/yottadb/octo-vehu to run the examples for yourself, and much more.
The command:
docker run -d -p 2222:22 -p 1338:1338 -p 8089:8089 -p 9430:9430 –name=octo-vehu download.yottadb.com/yottadb/octo-vehu:latest-master
will start the Docker image, with Rocto at TCP port 1338 listening for incoming connections.
Published on June 22, 2023