How to Visualize SAP Business One Data in Python with pandas

The rich ecosystem of Python modules lets you get to work quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. With the CData Python Connector for SAP Business One, the pandas & Matplotlib modules, and the SQLAlchemy toolkit, you can build SAP Business One-connected Python applications and scripts for visualizing SAP Business One data. This article shows how to use the pandas, SQLAlchemy, and Matplotlib built-in functions to connect to SAP Business One data, execute queries, and visualize the results.

With built-in optimized data processing, the CData Python Connector offers unmatched performance for interacting with live SAP Business One data in Python. When you issue complex SQL queries from SAP Business One, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to SAP Business One and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations).

Connecting to SAP Business One Data

Connecting to SAP Business One data looks just like connecting to any relational data source. Create a connection string using the required connection properties. For this article, you will pass the connection string as a parameter to the create_engine function.

To authenticate to SAP Business One you must provide the Userand Passwordproperties.

To connect to data, specify Url. This is your SAP Business One Service Layer root URL.

Follow the procedure below to install the required modules and start accessing SAP Business One through Python objects.

Install Required Modules

Use the pip utility to install the pandas & Matplotlib modules and the SQLAlchemy toolkit:

pip install pandas
pip install matplotlib
pip install sqlalchemy

Be sure to import the module with the following:

import pandas
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from sqlalchemy import create_engine

Visualize SAP Business One Data in Python

You can now connect with a connection string. Use the create_engine function to create an Engine for working with SAP Business One data.

engine = create_engine("sapbusinessone:///?Url=http://localhost:50000/b1s/v1&User=username&Password=password&CompanyDB=dbname&InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH&OAuthSettingsLocation=/PATH/TO/OAuthSettings.txt")

Execute SQL to SAP Business One

Use the read_sql function from pandas to execute any SQL statement and store the resultset in a DataFrame.

df = pandas.read_sql("SELECT DocEntry, DocType FROM Orders WHERE DocType = 'dDocument_Items'", engine)

Visualize SAP Business One Data

With the query results stored in a DataFrame, use the plot function to build a chart to display the SAP Business One data. The show method displays the chart in a new window.

df.plot(kind="bar", x="DocEntry", y="DocType")
plt.show()

Free Trial & More Information

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData Python Connector for SAP Business One to start building Python apps and scripts with connectivity to SAP Business One data. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.

Full Source Code

import pandas
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from sqlalchemy import create_engin

engine = create_engine("sapbusinessone:///?Url=http://localhost:50000/b1s/v1&User=username&Password=password&CompanyDB=dbname&InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH&OAuthSettingsLocation=/PATH/TO/OAuthSettings.txt")
df = pandas.read_sql("SELECT DocEntry, DocType FROM Orders WHERE DocType = 'dDocument_Items'", engine)

df.plot(kind="bar", x="DocEntry", y="DocType")
plt.show()