LINQ to Sage 50 UK Data



LINQ offers versatile querying capabilities within the .NET Framework (v3.0+), offering a straightforward method for programmatic data access through CData ADO.NET Data Providers. In this article, we demonstrate the use of LINQ to retrieve information from the Sage 50 UK Data Provider.

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the Sage 50 UK via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Sage 50 UK. 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 50 UK Data Source".
  4. Enter your data source connection information.

    Note: Only Sage 50 UK 2012 and above are supported.

    The User and Password properties, under the Connection section, must be set to valid Sage 50 UK user credentials. These values will be the same used to log in to the Sage 50 UK software.

    Additionally, the URL property, under the Connection section, will need to be set to the address of the company dataset desired. To obtain the address, do the following:

    1. If you have not already done so, open the Sage 50 UK software.
    2. Click Tools -> Internet Options.
    3. Select the SData Settings tab.
    4. Click the Details button next to Sage 50 Accounts. A window is displayed containing a list of company names along with the address to their corresponding datasets.
    5. Set the URL property to the value in the address field next to the company desired.

    Below is a typical connection string:

    URL=http://your-server:5493/sdata/accounts50/GCRM/your-address;User=Manager;
  5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting Sage50UKEntities 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 , update, delete, and insert commands. For example:

Sage50UKEntities context = new Sage50UKEntities(); var tradingaccountsQuery = from tradingaccounts in context.TradingAccounts select tradingaccounts; foreach (var result in tradingaccountsQuery) { Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.Name); }

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

Ready to get started?

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Complete read-write access to Sage 50 UK enables developers to search (Customers, Transactions, Invoices, Sales Receipts, etc.), update items, edit customers, and more, from any .NET application.