Connect to eBay 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 eBay data. This article demonstrates how to connect to eBay using Connect AI and report on eBay data in Crystal Reports.

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

Configure eBay Connectivity for Crystal Reports

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

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection

2. Select "eBay" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to eBay.

   If you will be accessing your own account, you can generate an OAuthAccessToken from your developer account dashboard. You can also allow other users to securely access their own accounts.

   Both of these methods require you to create an application key set to obtain values for the following connection properties: AppId, CertId, DevId, and SiteId.

   The user consent flow additionally requires the RuName and CallbackURL.

   See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

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

Connect to eBay 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!