ETL Dynamics 365 Business Central in Oracle Data Integrator

Leverage existing skills by using the JDBC standard to read and write to Dynamics 365 Business Central: Through drop-in integration into ETL tools like Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), the CData JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central connects real-time Dynamics 365 Business Central data to your data warehouse, business intelligence, and Big Data technologies.

JDBC connectivity enables you to work with Dynamics 365 Business Central just as you would any other database in ODI. As with an RDBMS, you can use the driver to connect directly to the Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs in real time instead of working with flat files.

This article covers a JDBC-based ETL -- Dynamics 365 Business Central to Oracle. After reverse engineering a data model of Dynamics 365 Business Central entities, you will create a mapping and select a data loading strategy -- since the driver supports SQL-92, this last step can easily be accomplished by selecting the built-in SQL to SQL Loading Knowledge Module.

Install the Driver

To install the driver, copy the driver JAR (cdata.jdbc.d365businesscentral.jar) and .lic file (cdata.jdbc.d365businesscentral.lic), located in the installation folder, into the ODI appropriate directory:

• UNIX/Linux without Agent: ~/.odi/oracledi/userlib
• UNIX/Linux with Agent: ~/.odi/oracledi/userlib and $ODI_HOME/odi/agent/lib
• Windows without Agent: %APPDATA%\Roaming\odi\oracledi\userlib
• Windows with Agent: %APPDATA%\odi\oracledi\userlib and %APPDATA%\odi\agent\lib

Restart ODI to complete the installation.

Reverse Engineer a Model

Reverse engineering the model retrieves metadata about the driver's relational view of Dynamics 365 Business Central data. After reverse engineering, you can query real-time Dynamics 365 Business Central data and create mappings based on Dynamics 365 Business Central tables.

1. In ODI, connect to your repository and click New -> Model and Topology Objects. 👁 Create a New Model
   
2. On the Model screen of the resulting dialog, enter the following information:
   • Name: Enter D365BusinessCentral.
   • Technology: Select Generic SQL (for ODI Version 12.2+, select Microsoft SQL Server).
   • Logical Schema: Enter D365BusinessCentral.
   • Context: Select Global.
   👁 Configuring the Model
   
3. On the Data Server screen of the resulting dialog, enter the following information:
   • Name: Enter D365BusinessCentral.
   • Driver List: Select Oracle JDBC Driver.
   • Driver: Enter cdata.jdbc.d365businesscentral.D365BusinessCentralDriver
   • URL: Enter the JDBC URL containing the connection string.

     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.

     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.

     👁 Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)
     

     Below is a typical connection string:

     jdbc:d365businesscentral:OrganizationUrl=https://myaccount.financials.dynamics.com/;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;
     

   👁 Configuring the Data Server
   
4. On the Physical Schema screen, enter the following information:
   • Name: Select from the Drop Down menu.
   • Database (Catalog): Enter CData.
   • Owner (Schema): If you select a Schema for Dynamics 365 Business Central, enter the Schema selected, otherwise enter D365BusinessCentral.
   • Database (Work Catalog): Enter CData.
   • Owner (Work Schema): If you select a Schema for Dynamics 365 Business Central, enter the Schema selected, otherwise enter D365BusinessCentral.
   👁 Configuring the Physical Schema
   
5. In the opened model click Reverse Engineer to retrieve the metadata for Dynamics 365 Business Central tables. 👁 Reverse Engineer the Model
   

Edit and Save Dynamics 365 Business Central Data

After reverse engineering you can now work with Dynamics 365 Business Central data in ODI. To edit and save Dynamics 365 Business Central data, expand the Models accordion in the Designer navigator, right-click a table, and click Data. Click Refresh to pick up any changes to the data. Click Save Changes when you are finished making changes. 👁 Viewing the data.

Create an ETL Project

Follow the steps below to create an ETL from Dynamics 365 Business Central. You will load Accounts entities into the sample data warehouse included in the ODI Getting Started VM.

1. Open SQL Developer and connect to your Oracle database. Right-click the node for your database in the Connections pane and click new SQL Worksheet.

   Alternatively you can use SQLPlus. From a command prompt enter the following:

   sqlplus / as sysdba
   

2. Enter the following query to create a new target table in the sample data warehouse, which is in the ODI_DEMO schema. The following query defines a few columns that match the Accounts table in Dynamics 365 Business Central:

   CREATE TABLE ODI_DEMO.TRG_ACCOUNTS (NAME NUMBER(20,0),accountid VARCHAR2(255));
   

3. In ODI expand the Models accordion in the Designer navigator and double-click the Sales Administration node in the ODI_DEMO folder. The model is opened in the Model Editor.
4. Click Reverse Engineer. The TRG_ACCOUNTS table is added to the model.
5. Right-click the Mappings node in your project and click New Mapping. Enter a name for the mapping and clear the Create Empty Dataset option. The Mapping Editor is displayed.
6. Drag the TRG_ACCOUNTS table from the Sales Administration model onto the mapping.
7. Drag the Accounts table from the Dynamics 365 Business Central model onto the mapping.
8. Click the source connector point and drag to the target connector point. The Attribute Matching dialog is displayed. For this example, use the default options. The target expressions are then displayed in the properties for the target columns.
9. Open the Physical tab of the Mapping Editor and click ACCOUNTS_AP in TARGET_GROUP.
10. In the ACCOUNTS_AP properties, select LKM SQL to SQL (Built-In) on the Loading Knowledge Module tab. 👁 SQL-based access to Dynamics 365 Business Central enables you to use standard database-to-database knowledge modules.
    

You can then run the mapping to load Dynamics 365 Business Central data into Oracle.