Skip to main content

Google Analytics Connections

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. For more information, see https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/provision/#/provision.

Limitations and Requirements

Note

During normal selection or import of an entire table, you may encounter an error indicating a problem with a specific column. Since some tables require filtering based on a particular column, data from them can only be ingested using custom SQL statements. In this case, the problematic column can be used as a filter in the WHERE clause of a custom SQL statement to ingest the table.

  • For more information, please consult the CData driver documentation for the specific table.

  • For more information on using custom SQL, see Create Dataset with SQL.

Note

For filtering date columns, this connection type supports a set of literal functions on dates. You can use these to reduce the volume of data extracted from the database using a custom SQL query. For more information, see the pg_dateliteralfunctions.htm page in the driver documentation for this connection type.

Note

Most interactions with the Google Analytics datastore are formed as custom SQL queries. More information on syntax and examples is provided below.

  • OAuth 2.0 authentication is required.

    • An OAuth 2.0 web client must be available for use in the Trifacta Application. For more information, see OAuth 2.0 for Google Analytics.

    • You cannot create OAuth 2.0 connections via API.

  • The following schema is supported: UniversalAnalytics.

    Tip

    This schema was previously called GoogleAnalytics by the driver vendor.

  • Google Analytics allows up to 10 metrics and seven dimensions in a single query.

    • When issuing a query that selects all columns, only the default Metric columns are selected for tables with more than 10 Metrics.

    • The default Dimensions are used unless you explicitly select other dimension columns.

  • All reports in Google Analytics must cover a specific date range.

    • The default behavior is to pull the last month of data if the StartDate and EndDate inputs are left unset.

    • To override this behavior, the values can be set directly in the query.

Create Connection

via Designer Cloud application

When you create the connection, please review the following properties and specify them accordingly:

Connection Property

Description

View Id

Unique identifier of the view

Tip

To acquire your View Id, login to Google Analytics and navigate to your site data. Click the name of your site in the top menu bar. The identifiers for the available views are listed as numeric values in the right column.

Connect String Options

The following is the default connect string option:

Timeout=0;SupportEnhancedSQL=true;

  • The first option sets the connection timeout in seconds. Setting this value to 0 disables timeouts.

  • For more information on the second option, see below.

OAuth2 Client

The client is displayed.

Note

When you create the connection in this window, you must click Authenticate, which authenticates to the app. This step is required.

Default Column Data Type Inference

Leave this value as Enabled.

For more information, see the driver documentation http://cdn.cdata.com/help/DAG/jdbc/default.htm.

Connect String Options

Enhanced SQL

By default, the following connect string options is included. This option enables an enhanced form of SQL support for the connection.

SupportEnhancedSQL=true;

When this feature is enabled:

  • In-memory processing that is handled by default in the querying application (Trifacta Application) is passed to Google Analytics for processing.

  • This feature enables the use of advanced SQL expressions, such as the use of more predicates, joins, and aggregations.

For more information on enhanced SQL for Google Analytics, see https://cdn.cdata.com/help/DAG/jdbc/RSBGoogleAnalytics_p_SupportEnhancedSQL.htm.

Data Type Conversions

For more information, see the driver documentation http://cdn.cdata.com/help/DAG/jdbc/.

Example queries:

To import data from Google Analytics, you typically create a custom SQL SELECT statement. Example:

SELECT distinct Date, Sessions, NewUsers, BounceRate, PageviewsPerSession, AvgSessionDuration, Browser, FROM GoogleAnalytics.Traffic where StartDate = '90DaysAgo' and EndDate ='Today'

Note

The distinct keyword is currently required in default configuration when referencing specific values in a where clause. Optionally, you can enable the use of enhanced SQL for this connection, which eliminates the need for the distinct keyword. See "Connect String Options" above.

  • Do not apply quotes, double-quotes, or brackets around field or table values.

  • Literal values should be in single quotes.

  • StartDate and EndDate parameters can be used to specify a date range.

For more information:

In this section: