Set Up a Data Source

• 1: PostgreSQL
• 2: MySQL
• 3: Google BigQuery
• 4: Google Cloud SQL
• 5: Google Sheets
• 6: Excel, CSVs and JSONs
• 7: Snowflake
• 8: Trino / Starburst Enterprise / Starburst Galaxy
• 9: Databricks
• 10: Mozart Data
• 11: Amazon Redshift
• 12: Microsoft SQL Server
• 13: Clickhouse
• 14: Amplitude
• 15: Google Analytics 4

1 - PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is one of the most widely used databases in the world, and its free! Everybody from developers writing their first line of code, to data scientists, to major corporations use PostgresSQL to store and query data.

You can connect Zing to your Postgres database from either the Zing web console, the Zing web app, the iOS app, or Android.

You’ll need:

• Hostname which is the URL or IP address of your database
• Port which is the port that your database is live on – typically 5432 by default for Postgres, but your port may differ
• Database Name which is the name on your hostname IP / URL you database is referenced by
• Username which is…your username. Best practice is to create a read only user
• Password which is…your password. Once you enter this, Zing will automatically encrypt this.

Web Console

Add a PostgreSQL database from the web console:

1. Go to your Zing Data Web Console and ensure you are logged in

2. Tap the ‘data sources’ tab

   

3. Enter your PostgreSQL credentials, as outlined above. If your database requires SSL to be enabled, turn on ‘Require SSL’ (not all Postgres configurations require this).

   

   

4. If your Postgres database is behind a firewall, you’ll need to configure your firewall to allow connections from Zing’s IP address: 34.75.82.6

5. Tap ‘Save’

6. The data source you just added will be available to everybody in your organization.

SSH Tunneling

Zing Data supports connecting to your postgres database via an SSH tunnel (sometimes referred to as SSH port forwarding). In an SSH tunnel, the entire network connection between your postgres database and the Zing Data platform is encrypted. This provides adequate security, even for databases that do not have SSL. In some cases, and for some databases, an SSH tunnel can provide better performance than connecting over SSL.

When seting up an SSH tunnel, you will need the following

• SSH username

  This is the username of the ssh tunnel.

• SSH private key

  Enter the SSH private key in RSA pem format in the text area. Make sure to not modify any of the newlines.

• SSH password

  This is usually not required, as an SSH tunnel can be set up without one.

• SSH port

  If no port is specified, Zing Data will attempt to initiate the tunnel connection over port 22.

App

To add a PostgreSQL database from your phone or the Zing Web App:

1. Go to the sources tab
2. Tap ‘Add a new data source’
3. Enter your database credentials
4. Tap ‘Confirm data source’
5. Zing will verify that it can connect to your data source and if successful, add it as a source. If Zing cannot connect to your data source, you'll see a message asking your to check your credentials and retry. If even after checking your credentials and retrying you still experience issues, reach out to Zing support here

2 - MySQL

MySQL is one of the most widely used databases in the world, and its free! Everybody from developers writing their first line of code, to data scientists, to major corporations use MySQL to store and query data.

You can connect Zing to your MySQL database from either the Zing web console, the Zing web app, the iOS app, or Android.

You’ll need:

• Hostname which is the URL or IP address of your database
• Port which is the port that your database is live on – typically 3306 by default for mySQL, but your port may differ
• Database Name which is the name on your hostname IP / URL you database is referenced by
• Username which is…your username. Best practice is to create a read only user
• Password which is…your password. Once you enter this, Zing will automatically encrypt this.

Web Console

Add a MySQL database from the web:

1. Go to your Zing Data Web Console and ensure you are logged in

2. Tap the ‘data sources’ tab

   

3. Enter your mySQL credentials, as outlined above. If your database requires SSL to be enabled, turn on ‘Require SSL’ (not all MySQL configurations require this).

   

4. If your mySQL database is behind a firewall, you’ll need to allow connections from Zing’s IP address: 34.75.82.6

5. Tap ‘Save’

6. The data source you just added will be available to everybody in your organization.

App

To add a MySQL database from your phone or the Zing web app:

1. Go to the sources tab
2. Tap ‘Add a new data source’
3. Enter your database credentials
4. Tap ‘Confirm data source’
5. Zing will verify that it can connect to your data source and if successful, add it as a source. If Zing cannot connect to your data source, you'll see a message asking your to check your credentials and retry. If even after checking your credentials and retrying you still experience issues, reach out to Zing support here

3 - Google BigQuery

You can connect Zing to Google BigQuery as a data source from the Zing web console. Zing Data is a trusted Google Cloud Partner.

You’ll need:

• Project ID which is the ID for your project in BigQuery
• Service Account JSON which is the file from your Google BigQuery account and allows Zing to authenticate into your BigQuery data source

You’ll also need to set up appropriate permissions, namely: Big Query Viewer rights and BigQuery Job User rights

Project ID

Just copy and paste your Project ID from your Google BigQuery account. You’ll get this from your Google Cloud Console.

Service Account

Your service account is set up by copying your credentials from your Google service account.

To access your BigQuery credentials required to connect Zing:

1. Log in to your Google Cloud Console

2. Click ‘IAM & Console’

3. Click ‘Service Accounts’

   

4. Add Big Query Viewer rights and BigQuery Job User rights

   

5. Select Manage Keys

   

6. Select Create Key

   

7. Select JSON

   

8. From here, download the JSON file containing your Service Account information. Copy and paste the file’s contents into the Zing Data setup screen in the ‘Service Account’ box.

   

Note:

Setting up Google BigQuery with Zing must be done using the Zing Web Console.

4 - Google Cloud SQL

Google Cloud SQL is a fully managed relational database service for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server with rich extension collections, configuration flags, and developer ecosystems. It automatically ensures your databases are reliable, secure, and scalable so that your business continues to run without disruption. Cloud SQL automates all your backups, replication, encryption patches, and capacity increases.

You can connect Zing to your MySQL database from either the Zing web console, the Zing web app, the iOS app, or Android.

Gathering the required information

Hostname

From the Navigation Menu on your Google SQL Cloud Console, click on “Connections”:

Find the Hostname from the Public IP address under “Networking section”

Port

The default port for your database engine type:

• MySQL: 3306
• PostgreSQL: 5432
• Microsoft SQL Server: N.A

Database Name

From the Navigation Menu on your Google SQL Cloud Console, click on “Databases”:

The table lists all the databases hosted on your Cloud SQL instance, identify the name of the database you wish to connect to.

Username

From the Navigation Menu on your Google SQL Cloud Console, click on “Users”:

Identify the name of your user under “User name”

Password

Retrieve the password corresponding to the user identified. Once you enter this, Zing will automatically encrypt this.

Whitelisting Zing Data’s IP on your Cloud SQL Instance

For Zing Data to connect to your Cloud SQL instance, you must authorize Zing’s network on the Cloud SQL console.

From the Navigation Menu on your Google SQL Cloud Console, click on “Connections” and then the “Networking” tab on the page,

Under the “Authorized networks” section, click on “ADD A NETWORK” to whitelist a network for the Cloud SQL instance.

Give a name for this network, i.e. “zingdata” and paste Zing’s IP address: 34.75.82.6/32 under “Network*”.

Scroll down and hit “Save” to update your changes.

Adding the data source on Zing Data

You are now ready to add in your data source on Zing!

Follow these guides on adding a new data source on Zing, based on your database engine:

• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• Microsoft SQL Server

Connecting via SSL

Downloading your certificates and keys

To connect Zing Data to your Cloud SQL instance via the SSL protocol, you need to download the following authentication documents from Google Cloud:

• Server Root Certificate
• Client Certificate
• Client Private Key

Only the server root certificate is required for Microsoft SQL Server.

You can do so by clicking on “Connections”, then the “Security” tab on the page, and then “CREATE CLIENT CERTIFICATE”:

Create a name for the SSL client and download all of the files or copy the texts on to somewhere secure:

Using your certificates and keys:

On Zing’s adding a data source page, click on “Require SSL” and paste the corresponding text into each text box, removing any trailing whitespace:

Zing will verify that it can connect to your data source and if successful, add it as a source. If Zing cannot connect to your data source, you'll see a message asking your to check your credentials and retry. If even after checking your credentials and retrying you still experience issues, reach out to Zing support here

5 - Google Sheets

Google Sheets is a widely used cloud spreadsheet. Setting up Zing with Google Sheets is the easiest way to get started, as it requires no database connection. You can simply authenticate in with your Google credentials, or provide the URL to your Sheets.

This is also the best way to import CSVs (assuming they are within Sheets’ size limitations).

You can also connect to a Microsoft Excel file by importing it into Google Sheets, then connecting that sheet to Zing.

You can connect Zing to Google Sheets from either the Zing web console, the Zing web app, the iOS app, or Android.

Connection Modes

There are two ways to connect to Google Sheets:

• Live Connection mode, which will always run questions on the latest version of a sheet, and works with multiple tabs (you can choose which to make visible in Zing).
• Snapshot mode, which will run questions on the version of the sheet when you first connected it to Zing, and subsequent updates to the sheet will not be updated in Zing. This mode supports a single tab.

Setup Steps

For both modes, you’ll need:

1. A correctly formatted Google Sheet with field names in the header row. Your sheet should contain only the data you wish to import. Only one table per sheet (for now). Field names should not include special characters.

   

2. Permissions to that sheet - meaning that your Google Account has at least ‘view’ rights to the sheet, OR the sheet has ‘available to anybody with the link’ access

Web Console

Add a Google Sheet as a data source from the web:

1. Go to your Zing Data Web Console and ensure you are logged in

2. Tap the ‘data sources’ tab

   

3. Tap ‘Google Sheets’

4. To connect Zing to Google Sheets that are not public, authenticate into your Google account by clicking ‘Access your Google Sheets’ and enabling both Zing read access to your Sheets, and Google Drive read permissions when prompted. Both of these permissions must be granted for Zing to list your sheets and connect to your sheets as a data source.

   From there you’ll see a list of your Google Sheets. Select one you’d like to import or search by name and click the name of the sheet, then click ‘Select’

5. To connect Zing to a publicly shared (available to anybody with the link) Google Sheet, you don’t need to authenticate into a Google account and can simply enter your Google Sheet URL.

   

6. Tap ‘Save’

7. Check for any warning messages which might indicate the sheet was incorrectly formatted.

8. Optionally choose if you want a live connection or a one-time snapshot. If you selected ’live connection’, choose which tabs you want to make visible to Zing.

9. The data source you just added will be available to everybody in your organization.

App

To add a Google Sheet as a data source from the Zing iOS or Android apps:

1. Go to the sources tab
2. Tap ‘Add a new data source’
3. To connect Zing to Google Sheets that are not public, authenticate into your Google account by clicking ‘Access your Google Sheets’ and enabling Zing read access to your Sheets when prompted. From there you’ll see a list of your Google Sheets. Select one you’d like to import or search by name and click the name of the sheet, then click ‘Select’
4. To connect Zing to a publicly shared (available to anybody with the link) Google Sheet, you don’t need to authenticate into a Google account and can simply enter your Google Sheet URL.
5. Optionally choose if you want a live connection or a one-time snapshot. If you selected ’live connection’, choose which tabs you want to make visible to Zing.
6. Tap ‘Confirm data source’. After a few seconds, Zing will show you if the sheet was successfully connected.

Notes

If you use the ‘Live Connection’ option to link Zing and the Google Sheet, be aware that modifying the sheet in a way that makes it improperly formatted (see above) will result in questions / graphs not loading correctly.

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The ’live connection’ option for gSheets is available on the free ‘basic’ plan for the next month (through January 31, 2023) while in beta, after which it will be on the ‘Pro’ plan. After January 31st, 2023 you’ll need to be on a ‘Pro’ or above to use live querying.

6 - Excel, CSVs and JSONs

Excel (XLS, XLSX) and CSV files can be read into Zing Data directly OR can be imported into a Google Sheet:

• Direct Import is fast, good for small files, and useful if you don’t have a Google account or can’t use Google Sheets at your organization.
• Google Sheets connection allows for dynamic alerts and updates to the data which will be immediately reflected in Zing.

Direct Import

Directly import CSVs and Excel files in Zing’s mobile apps (iOS, Android) and the web.

File types supported are:

• csv
• dbf
• geojson
• json
• ndjson
• xls
• xlsx

Files up to 10 megabytes can be uploaded on the basic (free) plan, and larger upload sizes are available on the Standard, Pro and Enterprise plans.

To import a file, select the Excel or CSV option under ‘Add Datasource’ tab on mobile + web, or from the data sources tab on the Zing web console.

Formatting the file

In order to successfully import a file, the correct formatting should be applied to the data in the file before uploading.

Excel Files:

• The first row must contain field names
• Field names should not include special characters such as ()./\[\]\{\}?!@#$%^&\*()\_+-=.
• There should not be any extra empty columns as these can result in the import to not work correctly.

JSON Files:

• The file should contain a list of objects.
• The property name should be enclosed in double quotes.
• If the value is a string or a date, that should be enclosed in double quotes too.

An example of a correctly formatted JSON file would be as follows:

[
  { "Mean": 315.97, "Uncertainty": 0.12, "Year": "1959-11-01" },
  { "Mean": 316.91, "Uncertainty": 0.12, "Year": "1960-11-01" },
  { "Mean": 317.64, "Uncertainty": 0.12, "Year": "1961-11-01" },
  { "Mean": 318.45, "Uncertainty": 0.12, "Year": "1962-11-01" },
  { "Mean": 318.99, "Uncertainty": 0.12, "Year": "1963-11-01" },
  { "Mean": 319.62, "Uncertainty": 0.12, "Year": "1964-11-01" },
  { "Mean": 320.04, "Uncertainty": 0.12, "Year": "1965-11-01" }
]

We’ve added the ability to use Zing with an unlimited number of CSV files, join across them, and add/replace/delete them in much more flexible ways:

Append: Add new data to an existing table

• Add new rows to an existing table
• If the new CSV has columns that aren’t present in the existing table, those new columns will be added
• This is the  equivalent of UNION ALL in SQL
  
  

Overwrite: Keep the same table name, but replace the data

• All existing questions and dashboards connected to that table will work how you expect, but use the newly-uploaded data.
• The previous data in the table is deleted

Multi-file upload: Add multiple CSV or Excel files at once

• Upload up to 10 MB per file (free plan) or 100 MB per file (paid plans)
  
  
• Optionally define join relationships between them to create a full queryable, multi-table data environment without needing to stand up a database

CSV and Excel files can co-exist and all live within a single data source

• Previously, each CSV or Excel file imported was its own ‘data source’
• Now, you can choose if you want to add a new file to an EXISTING data source, or instead create a NEW data source. Adding a file to an existing data source can make joining tables and appending / updating data easier.
  

Google Sheets Connection

Excel and comma separated value files are common ways to store data. You can import these files to Zing via the Google Sheet importer.

All of these file types are supported:

• .xls (if newer than Microsoft® Office 95)
• .xlsx
• .xlsm
• .xlt
• .xltx
• .xltm
• .ods
• .csv
• .txt
• .tsv
• .tab

Import Steps

1. First, import your (non-password-protected) file to Google Sheets:

   

   • Ensure the first row contains headers.
   • Every column to be imported must contain a header
   • Header names must be unique within your sheet
   • Exclude images, macros, tick-boxes, etc from your sheets prior to import

2. Tap ‘share’ and set link visiblity set to ‘anyone with the link’. Once the sheet is imported you can revoke this permission if you wish.

   

   Note that unlike all other data sources in Zing, Google Sheets imports are not ’live’ connections. That is, Zing takes a ‘snapshot’ of the sheet at the time of import but subsequent changes to the sheet will not automatically update in Zing. If you’d really like it to be a live connection, let us know.

3. Then follow the steps in the next section to add the Google Sheet to Zing.

Web Console

Add a Google Sheet as a data source from the web:

1. Go to your Zing Data Web Console and ensure you are logged in

2. Tap the ‘data sources’ tab

   

3. Tap ‘Google Sheets’

4. Enter your Google Sheet URL. Your sheet’s link visiblity must be set to ‘anyone with the link’. Once the sheet is imported, you can revoke this permission if you wish.

5. Add the name of the table you’d like your sheet to appear as in Zing. This will be searchable in Zing so making this reflect what the table is about will make it easier to find and use.

6. Tap ‘Save’

7. Check for any warning messages which might indicate the sheet was incorrectly formatted

• The data source you just added will be available to everybody in your organization.

  Note that Google Sheets has some size limitations on imports.

7 - Snowflake

Snowflake is one of the most commonly used cloud data warehouses, capable of ingesting data from a variety of sources, supporting robust permissioning, and allowing seamless scaling to large data sets.

You can connect Zing to Snowflake as a data source from the Zing web console or from the Zing Data mobile / web apps.

You’ll need:

• An active Snowflake account
• An active Zing Data account

Setup Steps

1. Login to the Zing web console, and click on the ‘data sources’ tab

   

2. Click ‘New source’

3. Select ‘Snowflake’ as the data source.

   

4. Enter your Snowflake credentials:

   • Hostname is required. If your snowflake URL is https://aa11111.us-central1.gcp.snowflakecomputing.com, enter the portion following https:// but before .snowflakecomputing.com. So in this example the hostname to enter would be: aa11111.us-central1.gcp
   • Database is required
   • Schema is optional
   • Username is required
   • Password is required

5. Tap ‘Save’, and Zing will confirm that a connection to the database can be established. A list of all tables in that database will then be shown.

   

6. By default, all the tables in your database will be made visible, but you can optionally turn off certain tables from being displayed by turning the switch for an individual table off, then hitting ‘save’.

   

7. The data source you just added will be available to everybody in your organization.

   Note: Setting up Snowflake with Zing can be done both via the Zing Web Console (as outlined above), or from the Zing Data app, by clicking on the ‘sources’ tab then ‘add a new source’.

8 - Trino / Starburst Enterprise / Starburst Galaxy

Trino is an open source, highly performant, distributed query engine (formerly PrestoSQL). Starburst Enterprise is the enterprise offering of Trino and Starburst Galaxy is the cloud native and fully managed service of the Trino query engine offered by Starburst. Zing Data works with Trino, Starburst Enterprise and Starburst Galaxy.

Connect Zing to your Trino database from the Zing web console.

You’ll need:

• Hostname is the hostname of Trino / Starburst Enterprise / Starburst Galaxy cluster. In Starburst Galaxy it’s in View Clusters » More Details » Get Connection; in Trino it depends on setup; in Starburst Enterprise Product it’s in EKS configurations

  

• Port is the port that your cluster is live on - typically 443 by default for Trino / Starburst Enterprise / Starburst Galaxy, but your port may differ.

• Username is…your username. Best practice is to create a read only user.

• Password is…your password. If you are using Starburst Galaxy, this will be the password you use to login to Starburst’s web portal. Zing will encrypt this.

• Catalog is the data source within your Trino/Starburst cluster you would like to connect to. Read more here.

• Schema defines a set of tables that can be queried. Read more here.

• Database Name can be any value - it is just how the name data source appears in Zing but isn’t used to connect to your cluster

Right now, Trino data sources must be set up on web (but are accessible across both Zing Web and Zing Mobile apps).

To add a Trino data source:

1. Go to your Zing Data Web Console and ensure you are logged in

2. Tap the ‘data sources’ tab

3. Enter your Trino credentials, as outlined above.

   

4. Choose if you’d like to make all tables in your schema visible, or if you’d like to select only certain tables to be visible.

5. Tap ‘Save’

• The data source you just added will be available to everybody in your organization.

9 - Databricks

Databricks is cloud data platform and is an outgrowth of Apache Spark. It can run on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.

You can connect Zing to Databricks as a data source from the Zing web console (and from the Zing mobile / web apps soon!).

You’ll need:

• An active Databricks environment
• An active Zing Data account

Setup Steps

1. Login to your Databricks web console and go to ‘User Settings’ at the top right

2. Under ‘Access Tokens’, click on ‘Generate new token’. Make sure you save it somewhere safe.

   

3. In the left-hand menu, switch to the ‘SQL’ context and click on ‘SQL Warehouses’.

   

4. From the list of warehouses, choose the one you want to query in ZingData and click on it.

5. Switch to the ‘Connection details’ tab and save the displayed info, we will be using it shortly.

   

6. Login to the Zing web console, and click on the ‘data sources’ tab.

   

7. Click ‘New datasource’.

8. Select ‘Databricks’ as the data source.

9. Enter your Databricks host, port, path and token gathered in steps 2 and 5 above.

   

10. Your Databricks schema can be found in Databricks by clicking ‘Data’ on the lefthand navigation and then looking under ‘Data Explorer’. Enter this into Zing.

    
    

11. Tap ‘Save’, and Zing will confirm that a connection can be established. A list of all tables in that database will then be shown.

11. By default, all the tables in your database will be made visible, but you can optionally turn off certain tables from being displayed by turning the switch for an individual table off, then hitting ‘save’.

12. The data source you just added will be available to everybody in your organization.

A step by step video is here:

10 - Mozart Data

While Zing supports common databases, if you want to connect Zing to CRM, ERP, and ads reporting systems you’ll likely want to use a third party that pulls in data from each source, standardizes it, and makes it easily queryable.

Mozart Data supports more than 300 data sources and allows for join operations across data sources, making the transformed data available to Zing as a Snowflake data source. Mozart Data supports:

• Sendgrid
• Square
• Stripe
• Amplitude
• Quickbooks
• Workday
• Google Analytics
• Facebook Ads
• Hundreds of others

To connect Zing Data to Mozart Data, you’ll need:

• A Mozart Data Account which is free for a 14 day trial period
• A Zing Data Account

Once you’ve created both accounts

1. Go to the Zing web console and click the ‘Data Sources’ tab then ‘Add Datasource’

2. Select ‘Snowflake’ as the data source type:

   

3. Login to your Mozart Data dashboard

4. Go to the ‘Integrations’ tab, then click ‘Zing Data’

   

5. This will display your connection information to copy + paste into Zing Data using the a ‘Snowflake’ data type

   • Hostname
   • Database Name
   • User Name
   • Password

   

6. Once you’ve entered all credentials into Zing, tap check connection and you’ll see a list of all tables from Mozart. If you want to limit which tables are visible, you can ’turn off’ some of the tables and they’ll not be visible to you or other users in your organization in the Zing UI.

   

7. Click ‘Save’ in the bottom right and the data source will be added. It will now appear in the ‘sources’ tab in the Zing app, and on the homescreen of the Zing app.

11 - Amazon Redshift

Amazon Redshift is a widely used cloud data warehouse, hosted on AWS and configurable as either a cluster where you define setup parameters, or a ‘serverless’ set-up.

You can connect Zing to your Redshift cluster from either the Zing web console, and then can access it via the Zing web app, iOS app, or Android.

You’ll need:

• Hostname which is the publicly accessible IP or URL for your Redshift database. Note that you’ll need to set your database to be publicly accessible.
• Port which is the port that your database is live on – typically 5439 by default for Redshift, but your port may differ
• Database Name which is the name on your hostname IP / URL you database is referenced by
• Username which is…your database (NOT AWS!) username. Best practice is to create a read only user
• Password which is…your password. Once you enter this, Zing will automatically encrypt this.

If you’ve not already created a Redshift cluster and made it accessible to a data querying tool outside youur VPC, you’ll need to:

• Create a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) – the default VPC is fine.

• Create a subnet group

• Expose a public IP (often using ElasticIP), allocate it, and connect it to your Redshift instance

• Set your Redshift cluster to ‘publicly accessible’ and connect it to the IP you’ll expose to the internet via a routing table

• Ensure your security group allows connections from IPv4 connections from the internet (or better, just from Zing’s IP specifically: 34.75.82.6 )

Web Console

1. Go to your Zing Data Web Console and ensure you are logged in

2. Tap the ‘data sources’ tab

3. Enter your Redshift credentials, as outlined above.

4. If your Redshift instance database is behind a firewall (which it always always will be), you’ll need to allow connections from Zing’s IP address: 34.75.82.6

5. Tap ‘Check Connection’

6. You’ll see a list of tables and views which you can allow Zing to access. By default ‘Include All’ is turned on which means all database tables will be visible to Zing. But if you’d like you can select a subset of tables to make visible to Zing.

7. Tap ‘Save’

8. Once you see that your connection has been successfully saved, tap ‘Close’

9. The data source you just added will be available to everybody in your organization.

   Zing will verify that it can connect to your data source and if successful, add it as a source. If Zing cannot connect to your data source, you'll see a message asking your to check your credentials and retry. If even after checking your credentials and retrying you still experience issues, reach out to Zing support here

12 - Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server is one of the most widely used databases for enterprise deployments, developed by Microsoft. MS SQL is scalable and includes ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) tools and reporting services. It is evolving rapidly in the cloud and on hybrid platforms.

You can connect Zing to your MS SQL database from the Zing web console.

You’ll need:

• Hostname, which is the URL or IP address of your database
• Database Name, which is the name on your hostname IP / URL, your database is referenced by
• Username, which is your username. Best practice is to create a read only user
• Password, which is your password. Once you enter this, Zing will automatically encrypt this.

Web Console

Add a MS SQL database from the web:

1. Go to your Zing Data Web Console and ensure you are logged in

2. Tap the ‘Data Sources’ tab

   

3. Enter your MS SQL credentials, as outlined above.

   

4. If your SQL Server / Azure database is behind a firewall (which it typically will be), you’ll need to allow connections from Zing’s IP address: 34.75.82.6

5. Tap ‘Check Connection’

6. Zing will verify that it can connect to your data source and if successful, add it as a source. If Zing cannot connect to your data source, you'll see a message asking your to check your credentials and retry. If even after checking your credentials and retrying you still experience issues, reach out to Zing support here

7. Choose the tables you want to include and tap ‘Save’.

   

8. The data source you just added will be available to everybody in your organization.

13 - Clickhouse

Clickhouse is an open-source database management system (DBMS) for online analytical processing (OLAP). It uses a column-based structure. Clickhouse was designed to be fast and highly-scalable. Clickhouse stands out for high performance because it gives attention to low level details when performing queries.

You can connect Zing to your Clickhouse database from the Zing web console.

You’ll need:

• Hostname, which is the URL or IP address of your database
• Database Name, which is the name on your hostname IP / URL, your database is referenced by
• Username, which is your username. Best practice is to create a read only user
• Password, which is your password. Once you enter this, Zing will automatically encrypt this.

If you require the connection to be secure, three additional fields would be required:

• Server Root Certificate
• Client Key
• Client Certificate

The Clickhouse documentation provides more information about generating certificates to connect via SSL.

Web Console

Add a Clickhouse database from the web:

1. Go to your Zing Data Web Console and ensure you are logged in

2. Tap the ‘Data Sources’ tab

   

3. Enter your Clickhouse credentials, as outlined above.
   
   If you are connecting to Clickhouse Cloud, you’ll typically want to use port 8443 and ‘use SSL’. Your connection host will be something like https://xxxxx123.us-east-1.aws.clickhouse.cloud

   

4. If your Clickhouse database is behind a firewall (which it typically will be), you’ll need to allow connections from Zing’s IP address: 34.75.82.6

5. Tap ‘Check Connection’

6. Zing will verify that it can connect to your data source and if successful, add it as a source. If Zing cannot connect to your data source, you'll see a message asking your to check your credentials and retry. If even after checking your credentials and retrying you still experience issues, reach out to Zing support here

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7. Choose the tables you want to include and tap ‘Save’.

   

8. The data source you just added will be available to everybody in your organization.

   

14 - Amplitude

Amplitude Analytics is one of the broadly used tools for storing user events, generating cohorts, and taking a deeper look into user journeys throughout your app or website.

But having this data live only in Amplitude, visible and queryable only from a computer limits your team’s ability to understand what is happening with users in real-time.

There are three main steps:

• Sync Amplitude Data to Google BigQuery to regularly (even 10 minutes in our case) push all user events in near real-time to your cloud data warehouse
• Set up Google BigQuery as a data source for Zing Data, including how to handle service accounts and permissions
• Query Amplitude analytics events from Zing’s iOS, Android, and web apps in just a few taps, and save analysis for easy re-use

Step 1: Syncing Amplitude Data to Google BigQuery (or Snowflake / Redshift)

1. Login to  Amplitude, then click the Data tab, then Destinations tab.
   
2. Click new destination and select BigQuery, Snowflake, or Redshift
   
3. Select the data you’d like to export export frequency
4. Review the schema and click Next.
5. Specify the dataset in the cloud data warehouse to receive your Amplitude data. If you’re connecting to Google BigQuery, upload the service account key file. This file must be in JSON format. Instructions for creating a service account in BigQuery with the appropriate permissions are here.
   
6. Click Next. Amplitude connects to your warehouse upload is successful, click Finish to complete the process.

Step 2: Set up BigQuery (or Snowflake / Redshift) with Zing Data

• Instructions to connect BigQuery to Zing Data are here
• Instructions to connect Snowflake to Zing Data are here
• Instructions to connect Amazon Redshift to Zing Data are here

15 - Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a supported data source for Zing Data, via a BigQuery connection. This lets you leverage Zing Data for streamlined query generation, mobile access, dashboard creation, and real-time alerts on top of your GA4 data.

Zing Data is a trusted Google Cloud Partner.

Step 1: Set Up Google Analytics 4

First ensure that your website has Google Analytics 4 properly configured. GA4 offers a wealth of user behavior data that you’ll be tapping into. Once your GA4 account is in place, proceed to the Google Analytics dashboard at analytics.google.com.

Step 2: Create a BigQuery Project

1. If you don’t have a BigQuery project, head over to cloud.google.com and create one (free tier available).
2. Enable the BigQuery API for your project.

Step 3: Link Google Analytics 4 to BigQuery

1. Navigate to the Admin section in Google Analytics.
2. Scroll down and locate “BigQuery Link” under “Data Streams.”
3. Click “Link” to establish a connection between your GA4 account and BigQuery.

Step 4: Wait 24-48 hours

GA4 data does not immediately sync to BigQuery and it can take even a few days (more than 24 hours from our testing) before you start seeing GA4 tables and events in BigQuery.

Step 5: Set up a view with data from all individual days of events

1. Within the BigQuery section of cloud.google.com, click **new query **from one of the event tables which has been populated by GA4. It will look something like events_20230817 or events_intraday_20230817

2. Create a query with the following text, then save and save as view

   SELECT * FROM ‘<PROJECT_ID>.<DATASOURCE_ID>.events_*`

This combines all daily events tables to make them queryable as a single table, similar to a UNION ALL of the events_day1, events_day2, etc.

Step 6: Configure a Service Account for BigQuery

1. Access the “Credentials” section under “APIs & Services” in Google Cloud.
2. Create a new service account, granting it necessary permissions (e.g., BigQuery Data Viewer, BigQuery Job User).
3. Download the service account JSON file containing credentials.

Step 7: Connect Zing Data to BigQuery

1. Log in to Zing Data.
2. Connect Zing Data to your Google BigQuery project using the service account details.
3. Select the desired datasets and tables

Step 8: Craft Data Queries with Zing Data

1. From the Zing Data home screen, click on the events view you created in step 5
2. Leverage natural language to generate queries for your GA4 data by typing in the search bar at the top.
3. Access these queries via your mobile device for on-the-go insights.
4. Combine queried data to create meaningful dashboards and visualizations by adding questions to a dashboard.
5. Set up real-time alerts based on specific data thresholds by tapping the top right three dots on any question with a time series.

Conclusion

By connecting Google Analytics 4 with BigQuery and Zing Data, you’ve unlocked a powerful mechanism for harnessing insights from user behavior with the flexible power of natural language querying, SQL, or easy visual querying with SwiftQuery.

This integration empowers you to analyze trends, track performance, and make informed decisions for your business, all while enjoying the convenience of natural language query generation, mobile access, and real-time alerts. Best of all, the free tiers offered by BigQuery and Zing Data make this powerful capability accessible to businesses of all sizes.

Note:

Setting up Google BigQuery with Zing must be done using the Zing Web Console.