Category Archives: Dundas

Dundas Rest API and Python: introducing PyDundas

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Dundas has a very complete REST API. You can do just about everything with it. It is what the web app uses, so if you are in need of an example, you can just look at the queries which are sent with the developer tools of your favorite browser.

That said, it is a bit of a pain to use in a script.

To make my life easy, I built PyDundas: a python package using in the background the API. This lets you abstract away all the nitty-gritty and you can concentrate on semantically pleasing code.

For instance, warehousing a cube is quite simple. It abstracts out for you logging, checking, waiting and more.

from pydundas import Api, Session, creds_from_yaml
import sys
import json
creds = creds_from_yaml('credentials.yaml')

with Session(**creds) as d:
    api = Api(d)
    capi = api.cube()
    cube = capi.getByPath('Awesome Project', '/relevant/path')
    if cube is None:
        print("Gotcha, no cube named like that.")
        sys.exit(1)
    print(cube.json())
    if not cube.is_checked_out():
        cube.clear_cache()

    cube.warehouse()
    print(cube.isWarehousing())
    cube.waitForWarehousingCompletion()
    print('Done')

There is a lot more that can be done with PyDundas. I developed it for my needs, so I only added what I actually needed and is thus far from complete. That said, I regularly update it and add new APIs, and it is open source so feel free to send me pull requests to expand it.

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Bridge parameter with multi-level hierarchy in Dundas

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Sometimes you need to send parameters to a data cube, which you cannot just handle via the slicers. In that case, the bridge parameters are awesome.

You can define inside your data cube a parameter (single, range, hierarchy…) and bind it to one or more placeholders in your data cube query. Then from your dashboard you can add filters bound to this bridge parameter.

I ended up using them a lot for a 3 level hierarchy, and this post explains how to do it.

Your parameter will be a “Single Member” (in opposition to range member (e.g. from and to for a calendar) or single number/string). This member will have multiple levels, depending on the hierarchy it’s bound to.

Indeed, when you create a bridge parameter, you bind it to a hierarchy. Then each level in the hierarchy is bound to a name which you will receive from the value in your parameter. In the example below, Top/Mid/Low Level are names coming from my hierarchy, A/B/C are generated by Dundas.

levels_vs_names

Those names can be used inside the Dundas script binding the bridge parameter and the placeholders. You just need to attach the bridge parameter to the placeholders, $top$, $mid$, $low$.

attach

You will need 3 slightly different codes for each level. In my example, if the level is not filled I return a different default value, so the code is not nice to factorise, especially as it’s only 7 lines long.

This is the code for the top level. It is always filled, but there could be a second or more level.

// always Resolve() first, to handle unresolved tokens.
SingleMemberValue h = (SingleMemberValue)$input$.Resolve();
// eg. top.mid.low.C or top.mid.B or top.A
string fullName = h.Value.UniqueName;
// Just return first element
return fullName.Split('.')[0];

The second level might be empty. In that case I return -1.

// always Resolve() first, to handle unresolved tokens.
SingleMemberValue h = (SingleMemberValue)$input$.Resolve();
// eg. top.mid.low.C or top.mid.B or top.A
String fullName = h.Value.UniqueName;
String[] bits=fullName.Split('.');
if (bits.Length >= 3) {
  // Note that Strings are coming in, but I need to convert to int
  return Convert.ToInt32(bits[1])
} else {
  return -1
}

Same for my third level, might be empty, is an int.

// always Resolve() first, to handle unresolved tokens.
SingleMemberValue h = (SingleMemberValue)$input$.Resolve();
// eg. top.mid.low.C or top.mid.B or top.A
String fullName = h.Value.UniqueName;
String[] bits=fullName.Split('.');
if (bits.Length >= 4) {
  // Note that Strings are coming in, but I need to convert to int
  return Convert.ToInt32(bits[2])
} else {
  return -1
}

Dundas: states with constant

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Within Dundas, you can set up states, which are great to be able to change some display depending on some values.

On a table, you might, for instance, want to show in green all values greater than 60% and in red all values less than 20%. This is easy enough by following the states documentation.

If you are not careful, though, you might end up with coloration not matching what you expect. This is especially true when you have total rows at different levels of a hierarchy. The first level will have the right colors, but others not (for instance states for days are ok, but not for month and year).

You need to know that states are a metric set feature and calculated at the server, not by visualisations. States have thus an aggregator, which by default is Sum. It means that if you have a constant of 0.6 (60%), the level higher in the hierarchy will check against twice this (so 120%) and so on.

To change this, you just need to change the aggregator. For a constant, you could use min, max or average, they would all give the same value, which is the one you expect.