This section describes how to edit the DSN configuration and then authenticate and connect to API APIs.

DSN Configuration

You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to edit the DSN configuration. Note that the installation process creates a both a user DSN and a system DSN, as described in Installing the Connector.

Note: The connector stores connection information in the Windows registry. To ensure that the connector can write to the registry, either run Power BI as an administrator or use a User DSN for your connection instead of a System DSN.

User DSN

Complete the following steps to edit the DSN configuration:

1. Select Start > Search, and enter ODBC Data Sources in the Search box.
2. Choose the version of the ODBC Administrator that corresponds to the bitness of your Power BI Desktop installation (32-bit or 64-bit).
3. Select the system data source and click Configure.
4. Edit the information on the Connection tab and click OK.

System DSN

Configure the system DSN the same way as the user DSN, except you will need to switch to the System DSN tab before performing Step 3.

If you're using Power BI's On-Premises Data Gateway with Standard mode, you must use the system DSN.

You must also specify a valid location for OAuthSettingsLocation (a path where OAuth credentials are locally stored to avoid repeated OAuth prompts).

This is because the Standard mode runs on service mode and can only access permitted locations, such as C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\PBIEgwService\AppData\Local\Microsoft\On-premises data gateway.

The CData Power BI Connector for API can be used to connect to a variety of data sources from within your application.

Connecting to Profiles

The connector can be used to connect to a variety of data sources, called Profiles, from within your application. An API profile is a collection of schemas modeling data from an application or online service as tables, views or stored procedures. API Profile files have the file exension ".apip" and can be download from the CData website.

To establish a connection using a Profile, set the Profile property to the path of the API profile file, and ProfileSettings to a connection string containing the credentials to the data-source. The most common forms of authentication are supported, including HTTP basic, HTTP digest, NTLM, and OAuth. For more information on the required connection properties, please refer to the documentation of each profile.