Analyze ADP Data in R via JDBC

Access ADP data with pure R script and standard SQL on any machine where R and Java can be installed. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for ADP and the RJDBC package to work with remote ADP data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to ADP and visualize ADP data by calling standard R functions.

Install R

You can match the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running open R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open 3.2.3, which is preconfigured to install packages from the Jan. 1, 2016 snapshot of the CRAN repository. This snapshot ensures reproducibility.

Load the RJDBC Package

To use the driver, download the RJDBC package. After installing the RJDBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RJDBC)

Connect to ADP as a JDBC Data Source

You will need the following information to connect to ADP as a JDBC data source:

• Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.adp.ADPDriver
• Classpath: Set this to the location of the driver JAR. By default this is the lib subfolder of the installation folder.

The DBI functions, such as dbConnect and dbSendQuery, provide a unified interface for writing data access code in R. Use the following line to initialize a DBI driver that can make JDBC requests to the CData JDBC Driver for ADP:

driver <- JDBC(driverClass = "cdata.jdbc.adp.ADPDriver", classPath = "MyInstallationDir\lib\cdata.jdbc.adp.jar", identifier.quote = "'") 

You can now use DBI functions to connect to ADP and execute SQL queries. Initialize the JDBC connection with the dbConnect function.

Connect to ADP by specifying the following properties:

• OAuthClientId: The client Id of the custom OAuth application you obtained from ADP.
• OAuthClientSecret: The custom OAuth application's client secret.
• SSLClientCert: Set this to the certificate provided during registration.
• SSLClientCertPassword: Set this to the password of the certificate.
• UseUAT: The connector makes requests to the production environment by default. If using a developer account, set UseUAT = true.
• RowScanDepth: The maximum number of rows to scan for the custom fields columns available in the table. The default value will be set to 100. Setting a high value may decrease performance.

The connector uses OAuth to authenticate with ADP. OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with ADP using the browser. OAuth access can be configured in ADP through ADP API Central. For more information, refer ADP's API Central Quick Start Guide and the OAuth section in CData's Help documentation.

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the ADP JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.adp.jar

Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

Below is a sample dbConnect call, including a typical JDBC connection string:

conn <- dbConnect(driver,"jdbc:adp:OAuthClientId=YourClientId;OAuthClientSecret=YourClientSecret;SSLClientCert='c:\cert.pfx';SSLClientCertPassword='admin@123';InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;")

Schema Discovery

The driver models ADP APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

dbListTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

You can use the dbGetQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the ADP API:

workers <- dbGetQuery(conn,"SELECT AssociateOID, WorkerID FROM Workers WHERE AssociateOID = 'G3349PZGBADQY8H8'")

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View(workers)

Plot ADP Data

You can now analyze ADP data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:

par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2))
barplot(workers$WorkerID, main="ADP Workers", names.arg = workers$AssociateOID, horiz=TRUE)