VOOZH about

URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/dataverse-cloud-crystal-reports.rst

⇱ Connect to Microsoft Dataverse Data from Crystal Reports

Connect to Microsoft Dataverse Data from Crystal Reports

👁 Mohsin Turki
Mohsin Turki
Technical Marketing Engineer
Use CData Connect AI to connect to and report on live Microsoft Dataverse data from Crystal Reports.

Crystal Reports is a business intelligence application by SAP designed to help you analyze your data with well-formatted, pixel-perfect, and multi-page reports. When paired with CData Connect AI, Crystal Reports gets access to live Microsoft Dataverse data. This article demonstrates how to connect to Microsoft Dataverse using Connect AI and report on Microsoft Dataverse data in Crystal Reports.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server interface for Microsoft Dataverse, allowing you to query data from Microsoft Dataverse 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 Microsoft Dataverse, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested Microsoft Dataverse data quickly.

About Microsoft Dataverse Data Integration

CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Microsoft Dataverse (formerly the Common Data Service). Customers use CData connectivity to:

  • Access both Dataverse Entities and Dataverse system tables to work with exactly the data they need.
  • Authenticate securely with Microsoft Dataverse in a variety of ways, including Azure Active Directory, Azure Managed Service Identity credentials, and Azure Service Principal using either a client secret or a certificate.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to manage Microsoft Dataverse entities - listing, creating, and removing associations between entities.

CData customers use our Dataverse connectivity solutions for a variety of reasons, whether they're looking to replicate their data into a data warehouse (alongside other data sources)or analyze live Dataverse data from their preferred data tools inside the Microsoft ecosystem (Power BI, Excel, etc.) or with external tools (Tableau, Looker, etc.).


Getting Started


Configure Microsoft Dataverse Connectivity for Crystal Reports

Connectivity to Microsoft Dataverse from Crystal Reports is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Microsoft Dataverse data from Crystal Reports, we start by creating and configuring a Microsoft Dataverse connection.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Microsoft Dataverse" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Microsoft Dataverse.

    You can connect without setting any connection properties for your user credentials. Below are the minimum connection properties required to connect.

    • InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
    • OrganizationUrl: Set this to the organization URL you are connecting to, such as https://myorganization.crm.dynamics.com.
    • Tenant (optional): Set this if you wish to authenticate to a different tenant than your default. This is required to work with an organization not on your default Tenant.

    When you connect the Common Data Service OAuth endpoint opens in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions. The OAuth process completes automatically.

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Microsoft Dataverse 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 Microsoft Dataverse data from Crystal Reports.

Connect to Microsoft Dataverse from Crystal Reports using Connect AI

To establish a connection from Crystal Reports to CData Connect AI, you will need to download the JDBC driver.

  1. Open the Client Tools page of CData Connect AI.
  2. Search for and select JDBC.
  3. Download and run the setup file.
  4. When the installation is complete, locate the JDBC Connect JAR file in the JDBC driver's installation directory, for example, C:\Program Files\CData\JDBC Driver for CData Connect\lib.
  5. Copy the JDBC Connect JAR file (cdata.jdbc.connect.jar).

After copying the JDBC CData Connect JAR file, you will need to paste it into the Crystal Reports installation location and configure the connection to Connect AI.

  1. Find the installation directory for Crystal Reports, for example, C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\java\lib
  2. Paste the JDBC Connect JAR file into the Crystal Reports installation directory.
  3. Go to the parent java folder. For example, C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\java This folder should contain a CRConfig file. 👁 Locating the CRConfig file in the Crystal Reports installation directory.
  4. Open CRConfig in a text editor.
  5. Add the path to the JDBC CData Connect JAR file in the
  6. Log into Crystal Reports and start a blank report.
  7. In the Database Expert dialog, click Create New Connection.
  8. Select the JDBC data source and the tables you want to add. Click OK. 👁 Selecting the JDBC data source.
  9. In the Connection dialog, enter the Connection URL (e.g. jdbc:connect:AuthScheme=Basic;user=username;password=PAT;) and Database Classname (e.g. cdata.jdbc.connect.ConnectDriver). 👁 Configuring the connection.
  10. Click Finish. The Database Expert dialog displays all available connections. 👁 Browsing the available data from Connect AI.

You can now create reports with the connected data.

Get CData Connect AI

To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from Crystal Reports, try CData Connect AI today!