How to integrate Dynamics 365 Business Central with Apache Airflow

Apache Airflow supports the creation, scheduling, and monitoring of data engineering workflows. When paired with the CData JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central, Airflow can work with live Dynamics 365 Business Central data. This article describes how to connect to and query Dynamics 365 Business Central data from an Apache Airflow instance and store the results in a CSV file.

With built-in optimized data processing, the CData JDBC driver offers unmatched performance for interacting with live Dynamics 365 Business Central data. When you issue complex SQL queries to Dynamics 365 Business Central, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Dynamics 365 Business Central and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations). Its built-in dynamic metadata querying allows you to work with and analyze Dynamics 365 Business Central data using native data types.

Configuring the Connection to Dynamics 365 Business Central

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Dynamics 365 Business Central JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.d365businesscentral.jar

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

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.

👁 Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (dynamics 365 business central is shown.)

To host the JDBC driver in clustered environments or in the cloud, you will need a license (full or trial) and a Runtime Key (RTK). For more information on obtaining this license (or a trial), contact our sales team.

The following are essential properties needed for our JDBC connection.

Establishing a JDBC Connection within Airflow

1. Log into your Apache Airflow instance.
2. On the navbar of your Airflow instance, hover over Admin and then click Connections. 👁 Clicking connections
   
3. Next, click the + sign on the following screen to create a new connection.
4. In the Add Connection form, fill out the required connection properties:
   • Connection Id: Name the connection, i.e.: d365businesscentral_jdbc
   • Connection Type: JDBC Connection
   • Connection URL: The JDBC connection URL from above, i.e.: jdbc:d365businesscentral:RTK=5246...;OrganizationUrl=https://myaccount.financials.dynamics.com/;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;)
   • Driver Class: cdata.jdbc.d365businesscentral.D365BusinessCentralDriver
   • Driver Path: PATH/TO/cdata.jdbc.d365businesscentral.jar
   👁 Add JDBC connection form
   
5. Test your new connection by clicking the Test button at the bottom of the form.
6. After saving the new connection, on a new screen, you should see a green banner saying that a new row was added to the list of connections: 👁 New connection added
   

Creating a DAG

A DAG in Airflow is an entity that stores the processes for a workflow and can be triggered to run this workflow. Our workflow is to simply run a SQL query against Dynamics 365 Business Central data and store the results in a CSV file.

1. To get started, in the Home directory, there should be an "airflow" folder. Within there, we can create a new directory and title it "dags". In here, we store Python files that convert into Airflow DAGs shown on the UI.
2. Next, create a new Python file and title it dynamics 365 business central_hook.py. Insert the following code inside of this new file:

   	import time
   	from datetime import datetime
   	from airflow.decorators import dag, task
   	from airflow.providers.jdbc.hooks.jdbc import JdbcHook
   	import pandas as pd
   
   	# Declare Dag
   	@dag(dag_id="dynamics 365 business central_hook", schedule_interval="0 10 * * *", start_date=datetime(2022,2,15), catchup=False, tags=['load_csv'])
   	
   	# Define Dag Function
   	def extract_and_load():
   	# Define tasks
   		@task()
   		def jdbc_extract():
   			try:
   				hook = JdbcHook(jdbc_conn_id="jdbc")
   				sql = """ select * from Account """
   				df = hook.get_pandas_df(sql)
   				df.to_csv("/{some_file_path}/{name_of_csv}.csv",header=False, index=False, quoting=1)
   				# print(df.head())
   				print(df)
   				tbl_dict = df.to_dict('dict')
   				return tbl_dict
   			except Exception as e:
   				print("Data extract error: " + str(e))
    
   		jdbc_extract()
    
   	sf_extract_and_load = extract_and_load()
   

3. Save this file and refresh your Airflow instance. Within the list of DAGs, you should see a new DAG titled "dynamics 365 business central_hook". 👁 New DAG added
   
4. Click on this DAG and, on the new screen, click on the unpause switch to make it turn blue, and then click the trigger (i.e. play) button to run the DAG. This executes the SQL query in our dynamics 365 business central_hook.py file and export the results as a CSV to whichever file path we designated in our code. 👁 Run the DAG
   
5. After triggering our new DAG, we check the Downloads folder (or wherever you chose within your Python script), and see that the CSV file has been created - in this case, account.csv. 👁 CSV created
   
6. Open the CSV file to see that your Dynamics 365 Business Central data is now available for use in CSV format thanks to Apache Airflow. 👁 CSV file with Dynamics 365 Business Central data.
   

More Information & Free Trial

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central and start working with your live Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Apache Airflow. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.