Power BI connectivity with Neo4J

[mmuthu]

Hi There,
Do anyone use know how to connect Power BI with Neo4j? We mostly use Power Bi as reporting tool for our team and would like to understand if there are any connectivity option to Power BI.

If not available, then Is there any good visualization tools available in the market for data analysis from Neo4J database?

Thanks,
Mahendar

[stefan_armbrust · Accepted solution]

https://xclave.co.uk/2019/02/06/actually-using-the-new-dataconnector-for-powerbi/ shows how to connect powerbi to neo4j.

[mmuthu]

Thanks Stefan.......

[Spkch]

Hey, I've been trying to accomplish what is written in that link, but I cant seem to do it.

After I log in with my username and password to the local database, I get the following error:

I followed everything step by step, even using the :play movies database.

Anyone got an idea what's wrong?

[charlotte_skard]

I'm pretty sure the issue here is that the 4.0 release of Neo4j has a different Transaction endpoint than the 4.0 MR2 version - I either need a 4.0 and 3.x version - or work out how to allow you to switch between the two -

I'm away at the moment, so it'll be slow going but I'll have a look later on if I can.

[charlotte_skard]

Please try https://github.com/cskardon/Neo4jDataConnectorForPowerBi/releases/tag/1.2.0 and let me know how you get on

[sjzhou2011]

Hi, I used Neo4j 3.5 and Power Bi desktop (September, 2019). When using Neo4j Power BI connector with Neo4j, I saw the error message. after providing the neo4j login info as well as cypher query. Any suggestions on resolving this issue? Thanks.

[charlotte_skard]

None unfortunately, are you able to share your model/query?

Which version of the BI connector are you using?

[sjzhou2011]

The connector version is 1.3. The cypher query is 'match (a:Account) return a limit 5;' which works on the neo4j browser.

[TonyOD27]

Hello,

This PowerBI connector is working very well for us. Any plans to update this?

Also, how does this compare to the Neo4j BI connector that was recently released?

Thanks

[charlotte_skard]

Hi @TonyOD27

The Power BI connector from: https://github.com/cskardon/Neo4jDataConnectorForPowerBi/?

What updates do you want?

All the best

Chris

[TonyOD27]

Hi @charlotte.skardon,

Yes, it's the PowerBI connector from https://github.com/cskardon/Neo4jDataConnectorForPowerBi/ .

Here are my proposed updates:

1. Expand the field to enter the cypher query. Some of my cypher queries span multiple lines and it's hard to condense the syntax to one line:

As an example, here's how Power BI accepts SQL queries:

2. Is there any way to establish a data pipeline so that data can be ingested automatically from Neo4j into PowerBI? Can this connector integrate with the upcoming release of Apache Hop? I think that would be useful.

3. Auto Refresh. I see that this has been already proposed under the Issues section in the githun repo but it's related to number 2 above.

Lastly, I began to notice that I now get this error message, even for simple queries like MATCH(p:Person) RETURN p.name LIMIT 100. Not sure exactly what is triggering this error but I didn't have this error message when I began to use this PowerBI connector back in July. After I export and inspect the cypher output as a csv and json, I don't see any extra characters at the end of the JSON input.

What could be causing this error?

Thank you,
Tony

[charlotte_skard]

Okey dokes,

• (1) Yes, I would love to get the Cypher field to be bigger - I've yet to work out how to do that, the docs for developing things like this are not what I would call detailed. I'll try to remember to put this into GH as an issue.

• (2/3) - These are pain areas, I've tried many times and as far as I know - I've done what I should do to get this to work, but I'm not a PowerBI expert so I don't know if it's not working because my setup is wrong, or because the connector isn't working (I mean I'm reasonably confident it's the latter)

• Error message: Errr, I don't know - it's over REST, so something like Fiddler might be of use to show exactly what is being sent - if you could put that into a GH I will look and see if I can replicate. Have you changed version of Neo4j? Query? - It's not an error message I've written, so I presume it's from the tools used by PowerBI, but I might be able to see

All the best

Chris

[charlotte_skard]

Turns out (1) was easier than I thought, so:

github.com

Release Multi-line Cypher · cskardon/Neo4jDataConnectorForPowerBi

1.4.0-beta-3

I mean - it can accept multiple lines

[charlotte_skard]

Or not - input is fine, but actual multi-line is not working.. I'll GH this and work on it 🙂 here

[charlotte_skard]

Ouch, took a long time, but multi-line cypher is there.

I guess... Christmas got in the way!?

Anyhews: Release 1.4.0

On to the error message - which I too get, though not consistently.

[charlotte_skard]

OK, now I don't get the error message - there were a couple of PowerBI Desktop updates over Christmas, it's possible they rectified it - but @TonyOD27 - if you can let me know the exact version of Neo4j you're using - and an example query I can have a look into it -

Issues on GH would be cool too 🙂

[TonyOD27]

Thank you @charlotte.skardon !

This latest version of the PowerBI connector is working well. I'm not getting any more error messages for now and having the Multi-Line for Cypher is a nice GUI improvement.

I'm using version 4.2.0 of the community edition on a CentOS 7 virtual machine. Here are our specs:

36GB of ram in the VM with 8 CPU. Storage is 25GB.
dbms.memory.heap.initial_size=25g
dbms.memory.heap.max_size=25g

I'm working on passing longer Cypher queries to the connector and I'll post on this thread or a GH Issue if I have any more problems or suggestions.

By the way, I watched this video (Why Your BI Users Need Access to Graph Data Insights | Neo4j BI Connector - YouTube) on the Neo4j BI connector. At the 15:48 mark, the presenter mentions that BI support for PowerBI is coming.

Out of curiosity, do you know if the BI connector will replace your connector? Or will there be a merger of the two? What is the status on the addition of PowerBI to the Neo4j BI connector?

Thanks!

[charlotte_skard]

Well, we're getting there @TonyOD27

Please use GH - as that way I can fix / work on things that are marked - but also it means someone else might 🙂

OK, I'll first talk about the BI Connector for PowerBI - Mine will probably always work / exist - I believe the aim is to have a BI connector equivalent to the JDBC one they have at the moment (so an ODBC based one), I mean another way to use PowerBI is with an ODBC-JDBC bridge as well. In terms of 'replacing' mine - not in that way - I suspect mine will fall out of use 🙂 but it'll be there as a connector as long as GitHub exists.

[kimmo_wiltshire]

Hi, Will this connect to Neo4j Aura using the bolt driver connection string - thanks

[charlotte_skard]

No unfortunately not, there's no way (that I've found) to implement a proper connector which uses the driver, so we're restricted to REST only 😕

[carib]

It seems like Neo4j now provides a connector to Power BI, but you have to write SQL to get data from Neo4j into Power BI: https://neo4j.com/blog/getting-started-with-the-neo4j-bi-connector/?ref=bi-connector

Am I reading that right? Using SQL to get data from Neo4j? That is beyond stupid.