Analyze MYOB AccountRight Data in R via JDBC

Access MYOB AccountRight 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 MYOB AccountRight and the RJDBC package to work with remote MYOB AccountRight 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 MYOB AccountRight and visualize MYOB AccountRight 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 MYOB AccountRight as a JDBC Data Source

You will need the following information to connect to MYOB AccountRight as a JDBC data source:

• Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.myob.MYOBDriver
• 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 MYOB AccountRight:

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

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

These properties are required when connecting to a company file (both for Cloud and On-Premise instances).

• CompanyFileId: You can find this by starting MYOB, opening your data file, and selecting Help -> About MYOB
• User: The username associated with your company file.
• Password: The password associated with your company file.

Connecting to a Cloud Instance

To connect to a cloud instance of MYOB, you can use the embedded OAuth credentials or create an OAuth app with MYOB. This process is detailed in the Help documentation.

Connecting to an On-Premise instance:

When connecting to an on-premise instance, set the following connection property in addition to those above:

• InitiateOauth: Set this to OFF.
• Url: The Url of your MYOB instance.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

java -jar cdata.jdbc.myob.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:myob:OAuthClientId=YourClientId; OAuthClientSecret=YourClientSecret; CompanyFileId=yourCompanyFileId; CallbackURL=http://localhost:33333; User=companyFileUser; Password=companyFilePassword;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;")

Schema Discovery

The driver models MYOB AccountRight 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 MYOB AccountRight API:

accounts <- dbGetQuery(conn,"SELECT Id, Name FROM Accounts WHERE Type = 'Bank'")

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

View(accounts)

Plot MYOB AccountRight Data

You can now analyze MYOB AccountRight 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$Name, main="MYOB AccountRight Accounts", names.arg = accounts$Id, horiz=TRUE)

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