Connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central Data in as an External Source in Dremio

The CData JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central implements JDBC Standards and allows various applications, including Dremio, to work with live Dynamics 365 Business Central data. Dremio is a data lakehouse platform designed to empower self-service, interactive analytics on the data lake. With the CData JDBC Driver, you can include live Dynamics 365 Business Central data as a part of your enterprise data lake. This article describes how to connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central data from Dremio as an External Source.

The CData JDBC Driver enables high-speed access to live Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Dremio. Once you install the driver, authenticate with Dynamics 365 Business Central and gain immediate access to Dynamics 365 Business Central data within your data lake. By surfacing Dynamics 365 Business Central data using native data types and handling complex filters, aggregations, & other operations automatically, the CData JDBC Driver grants seamless access to Dynamics 365 Business Central data.

Build the ARP Connector

To use the CData JDBC Driver in Dremio, you need to build an Advanced Relation Pushdown (ARP) Connector. You can view the source code for the Connector on GitHub or download the ZIP file (GitHub.com) directly. Once you copy or extract the files, run the following command from the root directory of the connector (the directory containing the pom.xml file) to build the connector.

mvn clean install

Once the JAR file for the connector is built (in the target directory), you are ready to copy the ARP connector and JDBC Driver to your Dremio instance.

Installing the Connector and JDBC Driver

Install the ARP Connector to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/ and the JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/3rdparty. You can use commands similar to the following:

ARP Connector

docker cp PATH\TO\dremio-d365businesscentral-plugin-20.0.0.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/

JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central

docker cp PATH\TO\cdata.jdbc.d365businesscentral.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/3rdparty/

Connecting to Dynamics 365 Business Central

Dynamics 365 Business Central will now appear as an External Source option in Dremio. The ARP Connector built uses a JDBC URL to connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central data. The JDBC Driver has a built-in connection string designer that you can use (see below).

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Dynamics 365 Business Central JDBC Driver. Double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.d365businesscentral.jar

Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

To authenticate to Dynamics 365 Business Central, you must provide the User and AccessKey properties.

To obtain the User and AccessKey values, navigate to the Users page in Dynamics 365 Business Central and then click on Edit. The User Name and Web Service Access Key values are what you will enter as the User and AccessKey connection string properties. Note that the User Name is not your email address. It is a shortened user name.

To connect to data, specify OrganizationUrl. If you have multiple companies in your organization, you must also specify the Company to indicate which company you would like to connect to. Company does not need to be specified if you have only one company.

NOTE: To use the JDBC Driver in Dremio, you will need a license (full or trial) and a Runtime Key (RTK). For more information on obtaining this license (or a trial), contact our sales team.

Add the Runtime Key (RTK) to the JDBC URL. You will end up with a JDBC URL similar to the following:

jdbc:d365businesscentral:RTK=5246...;OrganizationUrl=https://myaccount.financials.dynamics.com/;

Access Dynamics 365 Business Central as an External Source

To add Dynamics 365 Business Central as an External Source, click to add a new source and select D365BusinessCentral. Copy the JDBC URL and paste it into the New D365BusinessCentral Source wizard.

Save the connection and you are ready to query live Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Dremio, easily incorporating Dynamics 365 Business Central data into your data lake.

More Information & Free Trial

Using the CData JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central in Dremio, you can incorporate live Dynamics 365 Business Central data into your data lake. Check out our CData JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central page for more information about connecting to Dynamics 365 Business Central. Download a free, 30 day trial of the CData JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central and get started today.