Use Claude to Talk to Your Power BI XMLA Data via CData Connect Cloud



Leverage CData Connect Cloud Remote MCP to enable Claude to securely answer questions and take actions on your Power BI XMLA data for you.

Claude is a family of advanced large language models (LLMs) built by Anthropic, an AI research company founded in 2021. These models power the Claude conversational assistant and developer tools.

CData Connect Cloud offers a dedicated cloud-to-cloud interface for connecting to Power BI XMLA data. The CData Connect Cloud Remote MCP Server enables secure communication between Claude and Power BI XMLA. This allows you to ask questions and take actions on your Power BI XMLA data using Claude, all without the need for data replication to a natively supported database. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect Cloud efficiently channels all supported SQL operations, including filters and JOINs, directly to Power BI XMLA. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly deliver the requested Power BI XMLA data.

Step 1: Configure Power BI XMLA Connectivity for Claude

Connectivity to Power BI XMLA from Claude is made possible through CData Connect Cloud Remote MCP. To interact with Power BI XMLA data from Claude, we start by creating and configuring a Power BI XMLA connection in CData Connect Cloud.

  1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
  2. Select "Power BI XMLA" from the Add Connection panel
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Power BI XMLA.

    By default, use Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) to connect to Microsoft Power BI XMLA. Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) is Microsoft's multi-tenant, cloud-based directory and identity management service. It is user-based authentication that requires that you set AuthScheme to EntraID (formerly AzureAD).

    For more information on other authentication schemes, refer to the Help documentation.

  4. Click Save & Test

Step 2: Connect Claude to CData Connect Cloud

Follow these steps to add a CData Connect Cloud connector in Claude:

  1. Sign in to Claude.ai or create a new account.
  2. Expand the left navigation menu.
  3. In the bottom-left corner, click your user name and select Settings from the menu. The Settings screen appears.
  4. In the Settings screen, click Connectors.
  5. In the top-right corner, set your button toggle to Organization connectors.
  6. Click Add custom connector at the bottom of the page.
  7. Enter a name for the connector (such as Connect Cloud MCP).
  8. In the Remote MCP server URL field, enter https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp.
  9. Click Add to save the connector. The Connect Cloud MCP connector appears under Connectors.
  10. Click Connect to the right of the connector and enter your CData Connect Cloud user name and password. You have now connected Claude to CData Connect Cloud.
  11. Click the three dots after Connected and select Tools and settings.
  12. Review the provided tools and enable or disable specific tools made available by the server. In addition, determine whether you want unsupervised access to the tools, or whether you want Claude to ask your permission.
  13. Click Done when finished with your settings.

Step 3: Explore Live Power BI XMLA Power BI XMLA data with Claude

  1. In the left navigation menu of Claude, click New chat.
  2. You can now start exploring your data with natural language prompts. Claude outlines the steps it uses to retrieve data from the source in CData Connect Cloud. Refer to CData's prompt library for prompt ideas.

NOTE: Claude's setup process is subject to change. Refer to Claude's documentation for the latest setup information.

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