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BI Tool Integration

SoftClient4ES connects to common BI and SQL tools through the JDBC driver (jdbc:elastic://host:port, driver class app.softnetwork.elastic.jdbc.ElasticDriver) or the Arrow Flight SQL server (grpc://host:32010).

Where a supported connection path exists, a full step-by-step guide — connect, browse your indices, and run a cross-index JOIN — lives on the website. This page is an index; the website carries the screenshots and per-tool detail, and states the blocker for the tools that cannot connect.

Tested, Compatible, Unproven, and no path today

Four tiers, each a different claim:

  • Tested — exercised against SoftClient4ES.
  • Compatible — speaks a working protocol, but has not been through formal regression (best-effort).
  • Unproven — a connection path exists on paper, but nobody has connected it yet. Not a promise.
  • No path today — cannot connect without software that does not exist, for reasons on the tool's own side.
Tool Status Path Guide
Apache Superset Tested (dedicated dialect) Arrow Flight SQL https://softclient4es.dev/integrations/superset/
DBeaver Tested JDBC or Arrow Flight SQL https://softclient4es.dev/integrations/dbeaver/
Grafana Tested (via Arrow Flight SQL) Arrow Flight SQL https://softclient4es.dev/integrations/grafana/
Tableau Compatible (not formally tested) JDBC https://softclient4es.dev/integrations/tableau/
Power BI Unproven — Power Query's generic connectors are ODBC and OData, never JDBC. The one candidate path is a generic Arrow Flight SQL ODBC driver pointed at the sidecar; it has not been connected yet ODBC (unproven) https://softclient4es.dev/integrations/power-bi/
Metabase No path today — Metabase has no generic JDBC database type. Connecting needs a community driver plugin, and we do not ship one — https://softclient4es.dev/integrations/metabase/
Looker No path today — Looker-maintained drivers only, with a per-dialect JDBC parameter allowlist. Structural, not commercial: a licence would not close it — —

(Each blocker was checked against the vendor's own connection documentation — Metabase, Microsoft Power Query and Looker — on 2026-08-31 and 2026-09-01.)

Tableau: the temp-table probe

On every connection Tableau checks whether it can create a temporary table, by issuing a CREATE TABLE / DROP TABLE pair against a generated name. SoftClient4ES has no temporary tables — an Elasticsearch index is cluster-global and has no session scope — so that pair is refused with an HTTP 400 naming the statement and the reason, and Tableau moves on. Refusing is a supported path: Tableau's own connector documentation says that when the temp-table capabilities are disabled "Tableau will attempt to generate an alternative query to retrieve the necessary results."

The probe therefore costs one failed round trip per connection and is not itself a problem. What follows it is Tableau's alternative for a source without temporary tables, which uses subqueries — and since engine 0.24.0 subqueries and derived tables are accepted. (The quoted, fully-qualified identifiers Tableau emits alongside them have parsed since 0.23.0; what 0.24.0 added is executing the derived-table wrapper.) Tableau's own documentation warns that the subquery path "can be poor, particularly with large datasets", so it is a performance characteristic to watch rather than a refusal. Note that a derived table runs on the relational engine — since engine 0.24.0 with arrow-extensions 0.3.4 — and the JDBC driver ships it, so a Tableau connection has it.

A Tableau datasource customization file (.tdc) cannot suppress the probe. The capability that would do it, CAP_SUPPRESS_TEMP_TABLE_CHECKS, is not among the capabilities Tableau documents for JDBC connections — JDBC Capability Customizations Reference lists CAP_CREATE_TEMP_TABLES and around sixty others, but not that one; it belongs to the Connector SDK capability set, which a packaged .taco connector declares. We ship no .tdc, and writing one is a dead end worth not walking down.

Honest-gap note

The superpower of this release is a cross-index JOIN that Elasticsearch can't do. It runs from explicit JOIN … ON … SQL and, since engine 0.24.0, from the nested SQL a BI tool composes for you: subqueries and derived tables are accepted, and so is the quoted, fully-qualified identifier form Tableau generates. Tableau's Custom SQL wraps your query inside a SELECT … FROM ( … ) (Tableau's Custom SQL documentation, checked 2026-09-01) — that wrapper is a derived table, which now runs on the relational engine the JDBC driver ships.

Non-recursive CTEs (WITH …) and the set operators (UNION, INTERSECT, EXCEPT, with or without ALL) run on that same engine since 0.24.0 — a CTE reference is a derived table, and a set operation is its branches executed separately and combined. UNION ALL alone still runs on Elasticsearch, as it always has. See the website's Known Limitations page for the full picture, including the subquery and set-operator forms that are still refused by name.