1. Business Intelligence Connector
  2. Business Intelligence Connector Overview
  3. BI Connector Requirements and Limits

BI Connector Requirements and Limits

Requirements

  • The BI tools and other applications you connect to the Business Intelligence (BI) Connector feature must support OData v4/JSON.

  • Authentication using SAML Single Sign-on is not supported. Users must sign in using their OpenAir company ID, user ID and password to access their OpenAir OData feed.

  • You must have access to the Reports application to create and publish reports.

  • The Save list view configuration feature must be enabled for your account to publish list views.

  • You must use a secure URL scheme (https://) to access the OpenAir OData service from a BI tool, web browser or any other application. OpenAir uses the industry standard Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol to encrypt communication between the OpenAir server and the client application, and to ensure the security of the data transferred. Attempting to connect to the OData service using a URL scheme that is not secure (http://) will return an error (Unable to connect).

BI Connector Limits

  • Access to resource data in your OpenAir OData feed is read-only.

  • Publishing reports according to a schedule follows the limits of the report scheduler in the Reports application. The minimum scheduled refresh interval for your published reports is 24 hours. However, you can publish or refresh the report manually at any time.

  • Authentication using SAML single sign-on is not supported. Users signing in to OpenAir using SAML single sign-on will not be able to access OpenAir OData resources from BI tools, web browsers and other applications.

  • The OpenAir OData service is subject to request limits — see BI Connector Requirements and Limits.

  • The OpenAir OData service only supports the HTTP GET method — see Consuming OpenAir OData Resource Data in Your Applications.

  • The OpenAir OData service only supports the $top and $skip query parameters — See OData Query Options for more details.

OData Request Limits

The OpenAir OData service is subject to the following usage limits for each account.

Limit Type

Default Limit

Number of OData requests within a 24–hour window

10,000 requests (a maximum of 10,000,000 rows of data)

OpenAir issues a warning if you reach 8,000 requests

Number of OData requests per minute

500 requests (a maximum of 500,000 rows of data)

OpenAir issues a warning if you reach 450 requests

  • The OData usage limits apply to the number of read requests. Publishing resources to the OData service does not count toward your OData request limits.

  • Each access to any one published resource from the OData service uses at least one request. Every time you load data from a published resource into your BI tool or in a wizard preview screen and every time you refresh the data counts as at least one request.

  • Each request is limited to 1000 rows of data. Accessing a published resource with anything between 1 and 1000 rows of data uses one request. Accessing a published resource with more than 1000 rows of data uses 1 request for each 1000 rows or part therein — for example, accessing a published resource with 4001 rows of data would use 5 requests.

    Note:

    If you load published resources containing a high number of rows into your BI tool, your BI tool should send automatically as many requests as necessary to the OData service and as allowed by your usage limits and retrieve all the data seamlessly from the resource in your OData feed. Most applications supporting OData v4/ JSON should support combined requests.

    Application developers can process the response from the OData service and page through large OData resources using the supported OData query parameters. See Business Intelligence Connector Advanced Functions.

  • The OData request limits are independent of any other data limits.

  • Accessing data from your OData feed using OpenAir user scripting functions does not use any of your allocated OData requests.

  • OpenAir sends a warning email to the account administrator if a warning has been issued during the day (one warning email per day).

  • Administrators and users with the View OData limits role permission can view OData limits and usage for your account in the Administration module (Administration > Global Settings > Account > OData limits). The OData Limits page shows the maximum number of requests allowed for your account as well as the number of requests remaining in the current 24-hour window.

    OData limits page in the Administration module
Tip:

To ensure you stay within the OData requests limits for your account:

  • Disable previews in your BI tools. BI tools send an OData request to display a preview for each resource.

  • Refresh your data sparingly in your BI tools. Every data refresh uses as many OData requests as necessary to import all rows of data for each connected OData resource being refreshed. Most BI tools let you configure refresh settings and have options to refresh all data connections or only one data connection at a time.

  • Only import the data you need. Refine the configuration of the reports and list views you want to publish to import only the data you need to access from your BI tools. Filter your data in OpenAir and not in your BI tools or your applications to minimize the number of requests used with each import or refresh.

Note:

To adjust the OData request limits set for your account, contact your OpenAir account manager or OpenAir Customer Support.

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