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 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 than what is in use by Yellowfin. 

 

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 the following:

• 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.