Connect to Paylocity Data as an External Data Source using PolyBase

PolyBase for SQL Server allows you to query external data by using the same Transact-SQL syntax used to query a database table. When paired with the CData ODBC Driver for Paylocity, you get access to your Paylocity data directly alongside your SQL Server data. This article describes creating an external data source and external tables to grant access to live Paylocity data using T-SQL queries.

NOTE: PolyBase is only available on SQL Server 19 and above.

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

Configure Paylocity Connectivity for PolyBase

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

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

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

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

   Set the following to establish a connection to Paylocity:

   • RSAPublicKey: Set this to the RSA Key associated with your Paylocity, if the RSA Encryption is enabled in the Paylocity account.

     This property is required for executing Insert and Update statements, and it is not required if the feature is disabled.

   • UseSandbox: Set to true if you are using sandbox account.
   • CustomFieldsCategory: Set this to the Customfields category. This is required when IncludeCustomFields is set to true. The default value for this property is PayrollAndHR.
   • Key: The AES symmetric key(base 64 encoded) encrypted with the Paylocity Public Key. It is the key used to encrypt the content.

     Paylocity will decrypt the AES key using RSA decryption.
     It is an optional property if the IV value not provided, The driver will generate a key internally.

   • IV: The AES IV (base 64 encoded) used when encrypting the content. It is an optional property if the Key value not provided, The driver will generate an IV internally.

   Connect Using OAuth Authentication

   You must use OAuth to authenticate with Paylocity. OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with Paylocity using the browser. For more information, refer to the OAuth section in the Help documentation.

   The Pay Entry API

   The Pay Entry API is completely separate from the rest of the Paylocity API. It uses a separate Client ID and Secret, and must be explicitly requested from Paylocity for access to be granted for an account. The Pay Entry API allows you to automatically submit payroll information for individual employees, and little else. Due to the extremely limited nature of what is offered by the Pay Entry API, we have elected not to give it a separate schema, but it may be enabled via the UsePayEntryAPI connection property.

   Please be aware that when setting UsePayEntryAPI to true, you may only use the CreatePayEntryImportBatch & MergePayEntryImportBatchgtable stored procedures, the InputTimeEntry table, and the OAuth stored procedures. Attempts to use other features of the product will result in an error. You must also store your OAuthAccessToken separately, which often means setting a different OAuthSettingsLocation when using this connection property. 👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   

4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Paylocity 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 Paylocity data from Polybase.

Create an External Data Source for Paylocity Data

After configuring the connection, you need to create a credential database for the external data source.

Creating a Credential Database

Execute the following SQL command to create credentials for the external data source connected to Paylocity data.

NOTE: Set IDENTITY to your Connect AI username and set SECRET to your Personal Access Token.

CREATE DATABASE SCOPED CREDENTIAL ConnectCloudCredentials
WITH IDENTITY = 'yourusername', SECRET = 'yourPAT';

Create an External Data Source for Paylocity

Execute a CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE SQL command to create an external data source for Paylocity with PolyBase:

CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE ConnectCloudInstance
WITH ( 
 LOCATION = 'sqlserver://tds.cdata.com:14333',
 PUSHDOWN = ON,
 CREDENTIAL = ConnectCloudCredentials
);

Create External Tables for Paylocity

After creating the external data source, use CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE statements to link to Paylocity data from your SQL Server instance. The table column definitions must match those exposed by CData Connect AI. You can use the Data Explorer in Connect AI to see the table definition.

👁 Table definition in the Data Explorer (Salesforce is shown)

Sample CREATE TABLE Statement

Execute a CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE SQL command to create the external table(s), using the collation and setting the LOCATION to three-part notation for the connection, catalog, and table. The statement to create an external table based on a Paylocity Employee would look similar to the following.

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE Employee(
 FirstName COLLATE [nvarchar](255) NULL,
 LastName COLLATE [nvarchar](255) NULL,
 ...
) WITH ( 
 LOCATION='Paylocity1.Paylocity.Employee',
 DATA_SOURCE=ConnectCloudInstance
);

Having created external tables for Paylocity in your SQL Server instance, you are now able to query local and remote data simultaneously. To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your SQL Server database, try CData Connect AI today!