Connector Prerequisites

 

 

IDE Integration / Classpath 

The definitions for the required Yellowfin classes are available in the following libraries from a standard Yellowfin installation. These are located in the /appserver/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/lib/ directory of the installation. 

• i4-core.jar 
• i4-mi.jar 

 These are dependencies that are required to compile a connector plugin for Yellowfin. Referencing these libraries in an IDE will also allow for code-completion and function lookups while editing. 

 

Java Version 

Yellowfin 7.3 has backwards compatibility to Java 7. Any connectors made for public consumption should be compiled with Java 7, unless a connector’s dependencies force the use of a newer Java implementation. The plugin loader will display an error reporting that the version of Java is not sufficient if the loaded .jar file is compiled with a newer version that what is in use by Yellowfin. 4 

 

Connector Functional Restrictions 

There are several functional restrictions when using Third-Party Connectors compared to the features available for relational SQL sources. 

Limitations to Third-Party Connector reports could include:

• Drill Down functionality is unavailable. 
• Multiple DataSets cannot be joined. 
• Grouped Value functionality is unavailable. 
• Complex Connector Filter logic is unavailable. Multiple connector-level filters are all applied with logical ANDs. Bracketing and logical ORs cannot be used to change filter logic on a report. Application-level filters do not have these restrictions. 

 

Many of these features can be enabled with Yellowfin's Report From Report functionality, which allows for the creation of a view based on a Third-Party connector report results. Reports written against this view will have access to all report-level functionality available to relational sources.