Analyze Epicor Kinetic Data in R via JDBC

Access Epicor Kinetic data with pure R script and standard SQL on any machine where R and Java can be installed. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for Epicor Kinetic and the RJDBC package to work with remote Epicor Kinetic 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 Epicor Kinetic and visualize Epicor Kinetic data by calling standard R functions.

Install R

You can match the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running open R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open 3.2.3, which is preconfigured to install packages from the Jan. 1, 2016 snapshot of the CRAN repository. This snapshot ensures reproducibility.

Load the RJDBC Package

To use the driver, download the RJDBC package. After installing the RJDBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RJDBC)

Connect to Epicor Kinetic as a JDBC Data Source

You will need the following information to connect to Epicor Kinetic as a JDBC data source:

• Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.epicorerp.EpicorERPDriver
• Classpath: Set this to the location of the driver JAR. By default this is the lib subfolder of the installation folder.

The DBI functions, such as dbConnect and dbSendQuery, provide a unified interface for writing data access code in R. Use the following line to initialize a DBI driver that can make JDBC requests to the CData JDBC Driver for Epicor Kinetic:

driver <- JDBC(driverClass = "cdata.jdbc.epicorerp.EpicorERPDriver", classPath = "MyInstallationDir\lib\cdata.jdbc.epicorerp.jar", identifier.quote = "'") 

You can now use DBI functions to connect to Epicor Kinetic and execute SQL queries. Initialize the JDBC connection with the dbConnect function.

To successfully connect to your ERP instance, you must specify the following connection properties:

• Url:the URL of the server hosting your ERP instance. For example, https://myserver.EpicorSaaS.com
• ERPInstance: the name of your ERP instance.
• User: the username of your account.
• Password: the password of your account.
• Service: the service you want to retrieve data from. For example, BaqSvc.

In addition, you may also set the optional connection properties:

• ApiKey: An optional key that may be required for connection to some services depending on your account configuration.
• ApiVersion: Defaults to v1. May be set to v2 to use the newer Epicor API.
• Company: Required if you set the ApiVersion to v2.

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Epicor Kinetic JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.epicorerp.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 sample dbConnect call, including a typical JDBC connection string:

conn <- dbConnect(driver,"jdbc:epicorerp:Service=Erp.BO.CustomerSvc;ERPInstance=MyInstance;URL=https://myaccount.epicorsaas.com;User=username;Password=password;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;")

Schema Discovery

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

dbListTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

You can use the dbGetQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Epicor Kinetic API:

customers <- dbGetQuery(conn,"SELECT CustNum, Company FROM Customers WHERE CompanyName = 'CompanyName'")

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

View(customers)

Plot Epicor Kinetic Data

You can now analyze Epicor Kinetic 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(customers$Company, main="Epicor Kinetic Customers", names.arg = customers$CustNum, horiz=TRUE)

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