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MongoDB Connector for BI

Quick Start Guide for Windows

On this page

  • Prerequisites
  • Getting Started

Estimated Time to Complete: ~15 minutes

This guide provides step-by-step instructions to quickly set up the required components for the BI Connector on your local system. This guide is recommended for users who would like to experiment with the BI Connector or create a local environment for development or testing.

In this tutorial you will:

  • Start a local MongoDB mongod process

  • Start a local BI Connector mongosqld process

  • Create a data source name (DSN)

  • Connect with a BI tool of your choice

Prerequisites

Getting Started

1

Start a mongod Process

If mongod is not already running on your local system, start it from the command line in the MongoDB program directory. You can create the default data directory at C:\data\db or specify a different directory with the --dbpath option.

mkdir C:\data\db
"C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.6\bin\mongod.exe"
2

Import a Sample Dataset

Make sure your MongoDB instance has at least one collection with some data for testing purposes. A sample dataset with United States ZIP code information (3.2 MB) is available at media.mongodb.org/zips.json.

Note

To save the ZIP code dataset directly to disk, right click on the link and select "Save Link As..." This tutorial assumes that the saved file is in the directory C:\data.

Import the dataset into MongoDB. The following command imports the zips.json file into a collection named zips in a database named test:

"C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.6\bin\mongoimport.exe" --db test --collection zips --file "C:\data\zips.json"

See the MongoDB manual for help with mongoimport, the mongo shell program, and CRUD operations.

3

Start a mongosqld Process

Start a mongosqld process from the command line in the BI Connector program directory.

"C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Connector for BI\2.3\bin\mongosqld.exe"

With no command line options, mongosqld generates a schema from all the user-accessible collections in your MongoDB instance. For more information about specifying database namespaces for BI Connector to work with, see the mongosqld reference page.

If mongosqld starts correctly, the last line of on-screen output declares the namespaces it has found for its schema. For example, the following output indicates that mongosqld started correctly and sampled the zips namespace.

[schemaDiscovery] mapped schema for 1 namespaces: "test" (1): ["zips"]
4

Create a Data Source Name (DSN)

Create a System DSN by following instructions in the tutorial. For the purposes of this local test installation you can leave the User, Password and Authentication fields blank, because mongosqld is running without the --auth option.

Windows ODBC DSN
click to enlarge

When you press the Test button you should see the Connection Successful result.

5

Start an SQL Client or BI Tool

Most BI tools can import data from an ODBC DSN. There are instructions for connecting with several applications elsewhere in the BI Connector documentation.