Connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central Data from PowerBuilder via ADO.NET

This article demonstrates using the CData ADO.NET Provider for Dynamics 365 Business Central in PowerBuilder, showcasing the ease of use and compatibility of these standards-based controls across various platforms and development technologies that support Microsoft .NET, including Appeon PowerBuilder.

This article shows how to create a basic PowerBuilder application that uses the CData ADO.NET Provider for Dynamics 365 Business Central to perform reads and writes.

1. In a new WPF Window Application solution, add all the Visual Controls needed for the connection properties. Below is a typical connection string:

   OrganizationUrl=https://myaccount.financials.dynamics.com/;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;

   To authenticate to Dynamics 365 Business Central, you must select an AuthScheme and provide the required properties (OAuth by default).

   All Methods

   Specify the . If you have multiple companies in your organization, you must also specify the to indicate which company you would like to connect to. does not need to be specified if you have only one company.

   Access Key

   To authenticate with an Access Key, set AuthScheme to "AccessKey" and provide the and properties.

   To obtain the and values, navigate to the Users page in Dynamics 365 Business Central and then click on Edit. The User Name and Web Service Access Key values are what you will enter as the and connection string properties. Note that the User Name is not your email address. It is a shortened user name.

   If you wish to authenticate through other methods, refer to the Help documentation.

2. Add the DataGrid control from the .NET controls.
3. Configure the columns of the DataGrid control. Below are several columns from the Account table:

   <DataGrid AutoGenerateColumns="False" Margin="13,249,12,14" Name="datagrid1" TabIndex="70" ItemsSource="{Binding}">
   <DataGrid.Columns>
    <DataGridTextColumn x:Name="idColumn" Binding="{Binding Path=Id}" Header="Id" Width="SizeToHeader" />
    <DataGridTextColumn x:Name="nameColumn" Binding="{Binding Path=accountid}" Header="accountid" Width="SizeToHeader" />
   		...
   	</DataGrid.Columns>
   </DataGrid>
   

4. Add a reference to the CData ADO.NET Provider for Dynamics 365 Business Central assembly.

Connect the DataGrid

Once the visual elements have been configured, you can use standard ADO.NET objects like Connection, Command, and DataAdapter to populate a DataTable with the results of an SQL query:

System.Data.CData.D365BusinessCentral.D365BusinessCentralConnection conn 
conn = create System.Data.CData.D365BusinessCentral.D365BusinessCentralConnection(connectionString)

System.Data.CData.D365BusinessCentral.D365BusinessCentralCommand comm 
comm = create System.Data.CData.D365BusinessCentral.D365BusinessCentralCommand(command, conn)

System.Data.DataTable table
table = create System.Data.DataTable

System.Data.CData.D365BusinessCentral.D365BusinessCentralDataAdapter dataAdapter
dataAdapter = create System.Data.CData.D365BusinessCentral.D365BusinessCentralDataAdapter(comm)
dataAdapter.Fill(table)	
datagrid1.ItemsSource=table.DefaultView

The code above can be used to bind data from the specified query to the DataGrid.