OData vs Jaspersoft

OData and Jaspersoft are your two options for data integration and reporting in BlueDolphin.

In this article, we will explore the key differences between them, giving insight into their respective strengths and weaknesses. These guidelines should help you discover the optimal use cases and best practices, as well as to make right choices in your data management.

OData

• To be able to establish a connection, you need an API key with the scope OData. Only Admin users are able to generate API keys in BlueDolphin. The steps for creating API keys are explained in the section Working with the public API.
• OData connected to BlueDolphin can be used for governance to ensure compliance with data collection and utilization rules.
• OData provides an overview of all the processes that do not have an application or applications that are not linked to any of the processes. However, this cannot be done with Jaspersoft.
• OData feed allows you to create more advanced queries and analyze more complex structures and relationships between objects. The tips can be found on YouTube, search for “Odata Excel” or “Power Query”.
• OData can be used in Tools like: PowerBI, Excel, PowerShell, Tableau, Qlik, Power Automate and others. PowerBI is used primarily for creating dashboards and Excel for creating lists. Also, Excel is used for occasional reporting and PowerBI for regular automated reporting. OData can combine data from BlueDolphin and other applications.

          Tip: For OData in Excel, download all data first and perform filtering afterwards.

• Reports can be put to use in various ways:
  • PowerBI can be scheduled when you publish it to SharePoint
  • Excel can do an automatic refresh after starting up Excel
  • Within PowerBI and Excel, the Microsoft component PowerQuery is used. It is important to note that the queries made in PowerQuery can be reused from PowerBI to Excel and vice versa.
• Refresh returns the last data directly from BlueDolphin and it happens automatically. If there is an issue with the data refresh, contact the ValueBlue support team.

The following information is only available in OData:

For objects and related objects

For relationships

Jaspersoft

• Jaspersoft reporting in BlueDolphin can be used for governance to ensure compliance with data collection and utilization rules.
• Jaspersoft provides a quick overview of whether there are questionnaires or guest links linked to a specific object, guest links that have expired and need to be deleted or duplicate relationships.
• One data source report template has been created specifically for these purposes by ValueBlue, but using it requires some tweaking and assistance. In case you are interested in implementing this report into your BlueDolphin environment, please contact your account manager for further steps.
• There are certain Jaspersoft reports that can provide an insight into data quality, such as data not being updated over a long period of time. This offers possibilities to clear up the repository and improve data quality. For some insights though that have not been covered by reporting, you should look into the History of objects and views in BlueDolphin UI. There, you can see what data, when and by whom was created or changed, whereas a regular Jaspersoft report just shows the fact that an object was created or the last time it was changed.
• Certain information, which OData (PowerBI/Excel) cannot access, is exclusively available through Jaspersoft. These data sources (topics) include guest links, roles, views, and others, and they are stored within the previously mentioned template, which is not part of the default set in BlueDolphin.

• Finally, both Jaspersoft and OData allow you to validate if every application has an owner.

Limitations

• The main limitation is that you cannot automatically deploy Jaspersoft reports to your system. You still need to set up and configure the reports manually in order to run them.
• Jaspersoft does not show and you cannot add workspace/business units and relationship questionnaires information.