LINQ to SAP BusinessObjects BI Data

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the SAP BusinessObjects BI via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for SAP BusinessObjects BI. 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 SAP BusinessObjects BI Data Source".

4. Enter your data source connection information.

   To connect to your SAP Business Objects BI instance, you must set the following connection properties:

   • Url: set this to the rest API URL. After logging into the Central Management Console, choose 'Applications' from the combo box. Double-click on 'RESTful Web Service' and you'll see the access URL. By default it is, http://{Server-Name}:6405/biprws.
   • User: set this to the username of your instance.
   • Password: set this to the password of your instance.

   Below is a typical connection string:

   User=username;Password=password;Url=http://myinstance:6405/biprws

👁 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 SAPBusinessObjectsBIEntities 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:

SAPBusinessObjectsBIEntities context = new SAPBusinessObjectsBIEntities();

var mycustomreportQuery = from mycustomreport in context.MyCustomReport
 select mycustomreport;

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

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