Using the CData ODBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central in PyCharm

The CData ODBC Drivers can be used in any environment that supports loading an ODBC Driver. In this tutorial we will explore using the CData ODBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central from within PyCharm. Included are steps for adding the CData ODBC Driver as a data source, as well as basic PyCharm code to query the data source and display results.

To begin, this tutorial will assume that you have already installed the CData ODBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central as well as PyCharm.

Add Pyodbc to the Project

Follow the steps below to add the pyodbc module to your project.

1. Click File -> Settings to open the project settings window.
2. Click Project Interpreter from the Project: YourProjectName menu.
3. To add pyodbc, click the + button and enter pyodbc.
4. Click Install Package to install pyodbc.

Connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central

You can now connect with an ODBC connection string or a DSN. See the Getting Started section in the CData driver documentation for a guide to creating a DSN on your OS.

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.

Below is the syntax for a DSN:

[CData D365BusinessCentral Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central
Description = My Description
OrganizationUrl = https://myaccount.financials.dynamics.com/
InitiateOAuth = GETANDREFRESH

Execute SQL to Dynamics 365 Business Central

Instantiate a Cursor and use the execute method of the Cursor class to execute any SQL statement.

import pyodbc

cnxn = pyodbc.connect('DRIVER={CData ODBC Driver for D365BusinessCentral};OrganizationUrl = https://myaccount.financials.dynamics.com/;InitiateOAuth = GETANDREFRESH;')
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT accountid, Name FROM Accounts WHERE Name = 'MyAccount'")
rows = cursor.fetchall()
for row in rows:
 print(row.accountid, row.Name)

After connecting to Dynamics 365 Business Central in PyCharm using the CData ODBC Driver, you will be able to build Python apps with access to Dynamics 365 Business Central data as if it were a standard database. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback regarding this tutorial, please contact us at [email protected].