Connect to Bullhorn CRM Data as an External Data Source using PolyBase

PolyBase for SQL Server allows you to query external data by using the same Transact-SQL syntax used to query a database table. When paired with the CData ODBC Driver for Bullhorn CRM, you get access to your Bullhorn CRM data directly alongside your SQL Server data. This article describes creating an external data source and external tables to grant access to live Bullhorn CRM data using T-SQL queries.

NOTE: PolyBase is only available on SQL Server 19 and above.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server interface for Bullhorn CRM, allowing you to query data from Bullhorn CRM without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Bullhorn CRM, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested Bullhorn CRM data quickly.

Configure Bullhorn CRM Connectivity for PolyBase

Connectivity to Bullhorn CRM from PolyBase is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Bullhorn CRM data from PolyBase, we start by creating and configuring a Bullhorn CRM connection.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection

2. Select "Bullhorn CRM" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Bullhorn CRM.

   Begin by providing your Bullhorn CRM account credentials in the following:

   • DataCenterCode: Set this to the data center code which responds to your data center. Refer to the list of data-center-specific Bullhorn API URLs: https://bullhorn.github.io/Data-Center-URLs/

   If you are uncertain about your data center code, codes like CLS2, CLS21, etc. are cluster IDs that are contained in a user's browser URL (address bar) once they are logged in.

   Example: https://cls21.bullhornstaffing.com/BullhornSTAFFING/MainFrame.jsp?#no-ba... indicates that the logged in user is on CLS21.

   Authenticating with OAuth

   Bullhorn CRM uses the OAuth 2.0 authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, create and configure a custom OAuth app. See the Help documentation for more information.

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Bullhorn CRM Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions
   

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
   
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Bullhorn CRM data from Polybase.

Create an External Data Source for Bullhorn CRM Data

After configuring the connection, you need to create a credential database for the external data source.

Creating a Credential Database

Execute the following SQL command to create credentials for the external data source connected to Bullhorn CRM data.

NOTE: Set IDENTITY to your Connect AI username and set SECRET to your Personal Access Token.

CREATE DATABASE SCOPED CREDENTIAL ConnectCloudCredentials
WITH IDENTITY = 'yourusername', SECRET = 'yourPAT';

Create an External Data Source for Bullhorn CRM

Execute a CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE SQL command to create an external data source for Bullhorn CRM with PolyBase:

CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE ConnectCloudInstance
WITH ( 
 LOCATION = 'sqlserver://tds.cdata.com:14333',
 PUSHDOWN = ON,
 CREDENTIAL = ConnectCloudCredentials
);

Create External Tables for Bullhorn CRM

After creating the external data source, use CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE statements to link to Bullhorn CRM data from your SQL Server instance. The table column definitions must match those exposed by CData Connect AI. You can use the Data Explorer in Connect AI to see the table definition.

👁 Table definition in the Data Explorer (Salesforce is shown)

Sample CREATE TABLE Statement

Execute a CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE SQL command to create the external table(s), using the collation and setting the LOCATION to three-part notation for the connection, catalog, and table. The statement to create an external table based on a Bullhorn CRM Candidate would look similar to the following.

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE Candidate(
 Id COLLATE [nvarchar](255) NULL,
 CandidateName COLLATE [nvarchar](255) NULL,
 ...
) WITH ( 
 LOCATION='BullhornCRM1.BullhornCRM.Candidate',
 DATA_SOURCE=ConnectCloudInstance
);

Having created external tables for Bullhorn CRM in your SQL Server instance, you are now able to query local and remote data simultaneously. To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your SQL Server database, try CData Connect AI today!