LINQ to Adobe Target Data

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the Adobe Target via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Adobe Target. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData Adobe Target Data Source".

4. Enter your data source connection information.

   To connect to Adobe Target, you must provide the Tenant property along with OAuth connection properties mentioned below. Note that while other connection properties can influence processing behavior, they do not affect the ability to connect.

   To determine your Tenant name:

   1. Log in to Adobe Experience. The URL will look similar to: "https://experience.adobe.com/#/@mycompanyname/preferences/general-section".
   2. Extract the value after the "/#/@". In this example, it is "mycompanyname".
   3. Set the Tenant connection property to that value.

   User Accounts (OAuth)

   You must set AuthScheme to OAuthClient for all user account flows.

   Note: Adobe authentication via OAuth requires updating your token every two weeks.

   All Applications

   CData provides an embedded OAuth application that simplifies OAuth authentication. Alternatively, you can create a custom OAuth application. Review Creating a Custom OAuth App in the Help documentation for more information.

   Obtaining the OAuth Access Token

   Set the following properties to connect:

   • InitiateOAuth: Set to GETANDREFRESH to automatically perform the OAuth exchange and refresh the OAuthAccessToken as needed.
   • OAuthClientId : Set to the client Id assigned when you registered your app.
   • OAuthClientSecret : Set to the client secret assigned when you registered your app.
   • CallbackURL : Set to the redirect URI defined when you registered your app. For example: https://localhost:3333

   With these settings, the provider obtains an access token from Adobe Target, which it uses to request data. The OAuth values are stored in the location specified by OAuthSettingsLocation, ensuring they persist across connections.

   Below is a typical connection string:

   Tenant=mycompanyname;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;

👁 Required connection properties for the data source. (QuickBooks is shown.)

5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting AdobeTargetEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select commands. For example:

AdobeTargetEntities context = new AdobeTargetEntities();

var activitiesQuery = from activities in context.Activities
 select activities;

foreach (var result in activitiesQuery) {
 Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.Id);
}

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.