LINQ to Sage 200 Data

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the Sage 200 via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Sage 200. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData Sage 200 Data Source".

4. Enter your data source connection information.

   • Schema: Determines which Sage 200 edition you are connecting to. Specify either StandardUK or ProfessionalUK.
   • Subscription Key: Provides access to the APIs that are used to establish a connection. You will first need to log into the Sage 200 API website and subscribe to the API edition that matches your account. You can do so here: https://developer.columbus.sage.com/docs/services/api/uk. Afterwards, the subscription key may be found in your profile after logging into Sage 200.

   Below is a typical connection string:

   SubscriptionKey=12345;Schema=StandardUK;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;

👁 Required connection properties for the data source. (QuickBooks is shown.)

5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting Sage200Entities as our entity connection in App.Config.
6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select commands. For example:

Sage200Entities context = new Sage200Entities();

var banksQuery = from banks in context.Banks
 select banks;

foreach (var result in banksQuery) {
 Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.Id);
}

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.