Analyze Microsoft Dataverse Data in R via ODBC

Access Microsoft Dataverse data with pure R script and standard SQL. You can use the CData ODBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse and the RODBC package to work with remote Microsoft Dataverse data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to Microsoft Dataverse data and visualize Microsoft Dataverse data in R.

Getting Started

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Install R

You can complement the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open (MRO).

Connect to Microsoft Dataverse as an ODBC Data Source

Information for connecting to Microsoft Dataverse follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments.

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.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Windows

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Linux

If you are installing the CData ODBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse in a Linux environment, the driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties.

/etc/odbc.ini

[CData CDS Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse
Description = My Description
OrganizationUrl = https://myaccount.crm.dynamics.com/
InitiateOAuth = GETANDREFRESH

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Load the RODBC Package

To use the driver, download the RODBC package. In RStudio, click Tools -> Install Packages and enter RODBC in the Packages box.

After installing the RODBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RODBC)

Note: This article uses RODBC version 1.3-12. Using Microsoft R Open, you can test with the same version, using the checkpoint capabilities of Microsoft's MRAN repository. The checkpoint command enables you to install packages from a snapshot of the CRAN repository, hosted on the MRAN repository. The snapshot taken Jan. 1, 2016 contains version 1.3-12.

library(checkpoint)
checkpoint("2016-01-01")

Connect to Microsoft Dataverse Data as an ODBC Data Source

You can connect to a DSN in R with the following line:

conn <- odbcConnect("CData CDS Source")

Schema Discovery

The driver models Microsoft Dataverse APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

sqlTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

Use the sqlQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Microsoft Dataverse API.

accounts <- sqlQuery(conn, "SELECT AccountId, Name FROM Accounts WHERE Name = 'MyAccount'", believeNRows=FALSE, rows_at_time=1)

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View(accounts)

Plot Microsoft Dataverse Data

You can now analyze Microsoft Dataverse data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:

par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2))
barplot(accounts$Name, main="Microsoft Dataverse Accounts", names.arg = accounts$AccountId, horiz=TRUE)

👁 A basic bar plot. (Salesforce is shown.)