Data Sources
- 2 minutes to read
To visualize data within dashboard items, you need to first establish a connection to a data source.
A data source collects underlying data and passes it to a data engine that performs aggregation and summarization before data analysis.
The DevExpress Dashboard allows you to use various data source types: traditional SQL databases, OLAP cubes, Excel and XML files, etc.
The following data source types are supported.
SQL Data Source
Allows you to establish a connection to various types of SQL databases and to work with the connected data.
In code, the SQL Data Source is represented by the DashboardSqlDataSource class.
OLAP cubes
Provides the capability to connect to an OLAP cube in the Microsoft Analysis Services database.
In code, use DashboardOlapDataSource.
Excel Data Source
The Excel Data Source can be used to select data from Microsoft Excel workbooks (XLS, XLSX or XLSM) or CSV files.
In code, use DashboardExcelDataSource.
Entity Framework Data Source
You can connect to an Entity Framework data source defined within the current project or you can use an external assembly containing the required context.
In code, use DashboardEFDataSource.
Object Data Source
The Object Data Source provides the capability to connect to an object data source defined in a separate class within a current project.
In code, use DashboardObjectDataSource.
Extract Data Source
A data extract is a compressed snapshot of data from a regular data source. This data is saved to a local file and can be updated from the original data source at any time. For instance, you can work with a live SQL data source or you can use the Extract Data Source as an intermediate layer.
In code, use DashboardExtractDataSource.
Federation Data Source
The Federation Data Source establishes relationships and combines SQL Data Source queries, Excel Data Sources, and Object Data Sources to provide uniform access.
In code, use DashboardFederationDataSource.
Note
The DevExpress Dashboard uses database servers that can be configured to use case-sensitive table/column names. For this reason, a database scheme used in dashboards is case-sensitive to prevent any problem when the product is used with such servers.