Connect to Live Paylocity Data in PostGresSQL Interface through CData Connect AI

There are a vast number of PostgreSQL clients available on the Internet. PostgreSQL is a popular interface for data access. When you pair PostgreSQL with CData Connect AI, you gain database-like access to live Paylocity data from PostgreSQL. In this article, we walk through the process of connecting to Paylocity data in Connect AI and establishing a connection between Connect AI and PostgreSQL using a TDS foreign data wrapper (FDW).

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.

Connect to Paylocity in Connect AI

CData Connect AI uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources.

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 PostgreSQL.

Build the TDS Foreign Data Wrapper

The Foreign Data Wrapper can be installed as an extension to PostgreSQL, without recompiling PostgreSQL. The tds_fdw extension is used as an example (https://github.com/tds-fdw/tds_fdw).

1. You can clone and build the git repository via something like the following view source:

   sudo apt-get install git
   git clone https://github.com/tds-fdw/tds_fdw.git
   cd tds_fdw
   make USE_PGXS=1
   sudo make USE_PGXS=1 install
   

   Note: If you have several PostgreSQL versions and you do not want to build for the default one, first locate where the binary for pg_config is, take note of the full path, and then append PG_CONFIG=
2. After you finish the installation, then start the server:

   sudo service postgresql start
   

3. Then go inside the Postgres database

   psql -h localhost -U postgres -d postgres
   

   Note: Instead of localhost you can put the IP where your PostgreSQL is hosted.

Connect to Paylocity data as a PostgreSQL Database and query the data!

After you have installed the extension, follow the steps below to start executing queries to Paylocity data:

1. Log into your database.
2. Load the extension for the database:

   CREATE EXTENSION tds_fdw;
   

3. Create a server object for Paylocity data:

   CREATE SERVER "Paylocity1" FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER tds_fdw OPTIONS (servername'tds.cdata.com', port '14333', database 'Paylocity1');
   

4. Configure user mapping with your email and Personal Access Token from your Connect AI account:

   CREATE USER MAPPING for postgres SERVER "Paylocity1" OPTIONS (username '[email protected]', password 'your_personal_access_token' );
   

5. Create the local schema:

   CREATE SCHEMA "Paylocity1";
   

6. Create a foreign table in your local database:

   #Using a table_name definition:
   
   CREATE FOREIGN TABLE "Paylocity1".Employee ( 
   id varchar, 
   LastName varchar) 
   SERVER "Paylocity1"
   OPTIONS(table_name 'Paylocity.Employee', row_estimate_method 'showplan_all');
   
   #Or using a schema_name and table_name definition:
   
   CREATE FOREIGN TABLE "Paylocity1".Employee ( 
   id varchar, 
   LastName varchar) 
   SERVER "Paylocity1"
   OPTIONS (schema_name 'Paylocity', table_name 'Employee', row_estimate_method 'showplan_all');
   
   #Or using a query definition:
   
   CREATE FOREIGN TABLE "Paylocity1".Employee (
   id varchar, 
   LastName varchar) 
   SERVER "Paylocity1"
   OPTIONS (query 'SELECT * FROM Paylocity.Employee', row_estimate_method 'showplan_all');
   
   #Or setting a remote column name:
   
   CREATE FOREIGN TABLE "Paylocity1".Employee (
   id varchar,
   col2 varchar OPTIONS (column_name 'LastName'))
   SERVER "Paylocity1"
   OPTIONS (schema_name 'Paylocity', table_name 'Employee', row_estimate_method 'showplan_all');
   

7. You can now execute read/write commands to Paylocity:

   SELECT id, LastName
   FROM "Paylocity1".Employee;
   

More Information & Free Trial

Now, you have created a simple query from live Paylocity data. For more information on connecting to Paylocity (and more than 200 other data sources), visit the Connect AI page. Sign up for a free trial and start working with live Paylocity data in PostgreSQL.