Forum Discussion

StephenRogers's avatar
StephenRogers
Qrew Trainee
9 years ago

Extract Data from QuickBase to Use in PowerBI

I need to extract data from QuickBase on a regular basis (ideal would be every 10-15 minutes into a SQL based analytical data model for consumption by PowerBI dashboards and reports.

As I understand it, the only native way to do this is via the API.  There are 2 issues I'm having there - 1) the XML response I'm getting doesn't have a schema and thus is not consumable by PowerBI (I'm trying to get a nice standard equivalent to CSV but haven't figured that out yet); 2) there are API charges for calling it that will add up for such frequent data access.

I understand that there is Qunect ODBC driver and I am looking into that (expensive) tool, but am concerned that it is just a wrapper for the API and if so it would be both slow and costly to use.

I am quite capable of writing code to do what I need, but I need to do feasibility testing before embarking on that.

Can someone help point me in a good direction on this?  My customer has years of data in QB and needs to be able to repurpose it using external tools, without starting over from scratch with a new system.

Thanks, Stephen
  • DrewVoge's avatar
    DrewVoge
    Qrew Cadet
    9 years ago
    QUNECT has been a solid tool for us for several years.  We move a substantial amount of data back and forth between quickbase and MS SQL Server each day.  It does affect your API count, but depending on how you set things up you can mitigate that to some extent.  You can always use his 30 day trial.  
  • StephenRogers's avatar
    StephenRogers
    Qrew Trainee
    9 years ago
    Thanks Drew, I am trying Qunect out right now and when I get farther along will put some additional comments here for others to see.
  • PhillipDennis's avatar
    PhillipDennis
    Qrew Cadet
    9 years ago
    What's triggering the changes in the QuickBase app that need to be reflected in PowerBI every 10-15 minutes? Is it new/changed records within the app by human user action? Or an API action or sync update?

    If it's user action, you could possibly use the form to inject a script that would (1) transform the data into CSV and (2) make a third-party API call to write it somewhere PowerBI could read it without needing to make a QuickBase API call. I'm not sure about the feasibility of this, but if Qunect isn't the right solution and you must limit the QuickBase API calls, I would investigate this further.