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kevinfranck
Frequent Visitor

Custom BI Connector for SSAS Tabular Cube

I am looking to create a Custom BI Connector for SSAS Tabular Cube.  There is a lot of information about connecting to APIs and SQL Databases.  Using the examples on GIT Hub (https://github.com/microsoft/DataConnectors/tree/master/samples ) we have created custom connectors to our SQL Server Data Lake. I have not had much luck finding information about how one would go about building a custom connector to SSAS Tabular Cubes.  Is it possible to create a custom connector to SSAS Tabular Cubes?

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nickyvv
Community Champion
Community Champion

Hi @kevinfranck,

what is the exact need for a custom connector to SSAS Tabular cubes? What are you missing in the standard connector?


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There is nothing missing in the standard connector per se.  The benefits of building a custom connector for our clients is really UX driven.  

-- Clients use same login information used to connect to the Web Application

-- No need to know the location of the SSAS Server

-- No need to know the AD 20 character PreWindow2000UserName used by SSAS

 

The web application that our clients use to drive the creation of their specific SSAS cubes requires them to provide the following:

-- URL

-- Username/Email Address

-- Password

Idealy when they connect to their SSAS cube via Power BI Desktop, they would be prompted for that same set of information (see screen shot below)

kevinfranck_1-1600949621975.png

Instead of needing to know the SSAS Server and their AD PreWindows2000UserName (Because SSAS uses the PreWindows2000 user name for authentication and that value only allows for 20 characters, our users do not actually know their PreWindows2000UserNames). 

 

With those inputs we would then call a web api that would authenticate the user and return the following information assuming valid information was provided:

-- SSAS Server (which can be different based on the URL)

-- PreWindows2000UserName

-- We already have their password

 

We would now have all of the information required to connect to the SSAS Server and display the cubes that they have access to.

Hi Kevin,

We have a very similar need.  Were you able to find out anything around this?

 

Brian

We decided to handle this through training.  Users launch PBI desktop using the RUN AS command in a BATCH file.  Enter the password in the less than ideal COMMAND window which does not indicate keystrokes.  That is the hard part.  Then once in Power BI Desktop with the relevant windows account, they choose Power Platform and select from the existing PowerBI Datasets that they have access to.

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