Using Metabase Database Analytics Open Source Platform with IBM i AS400 DB2

What is Metabase?

It's an open source analytics platform. 

Enabling you to connect to various databases and extract the data from those in the form of charts, tables, Excel downloads.

 

From the website:

Anyone on your team can get answers to questions about your data with just a few clicks, whether it's the CEO or Customer Support.

When the questions get more complicated, SQL and our notebook editor are there for the data savvy.

 

It supports some databases natively, such as PostgreSQL, mySQL, SQL Server, etc. For unsupported databases, you can write your own plugin or driver or use 3rd party developed ones on github called Community-built database drivers.

 https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/developers-guide-drivers.html

 

For AS400 / IBM i DB2, there are some drivers already developed /maintained for this available on github:

https://github.com/dludwig-jrt/metabase-db2-driver/network/members 

and gitlab:

https://gitlab.com/itssophie/metabase-db2-driver-project

You can use gitlab to build the drivers

Specific instructions how to build a driver:

v7r1 iSeries DB2 Driver for Metabase

Prereqs: Install Metabase locally, compiled for building drivers

cd /path/to/metabase/source
wget desired version of metabase source from: https://github.com/metabase/metabase/releases/xxxx...
unzip / untar
lein install-for-building-drivers

Build the DB2 driver using the newly-built metabase as a dependency

git clone this repository
cd /path/to/db2-driver-code-from-github
lein clean
DEBUG=1 LEIN_SNAPSHOTS_IN_RELEASE=true lein uberjar

Copy the newly built driver to your plugins dir and restart Metabase

along with the jt400.jar from IBM's sourceforge project page depending on your OS: https://javadoc.midrange.com/readme.html

cp target/uberjar/db2.metabase-driver.jar /path/to/metabase/plugins/
cd /path/to/metabase/plugins wget sourceforge jt400 applicable driver version (in this case 8.5): 
jar -jar /path/to/metabase/metabase.jar

or:

cp target/uberjar/db2.metabase-driver.jar /path/to/metabase/source/plugins
cd /path/to/metabase/plugins wget sourceforge jt400 applicable driver version (in this case 8.5)
cd /path/to/metabase/source
lein run