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Get the Report →Analyze Workday Data in R
Create data visualizations and use high-performance statistical functions to analyze Workday data in Microsoft R Open.
Access Workday data with pure R script and standard SQL. You can use the CData ODBC Driver for Workday and the RODBC package to work with remote Workday data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to Workday data and visualize Workday data in R.
Install R
You can complement the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open (MRO).
Connect to Workday as an ODBC Data Source
Information for connecting to Workday follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments.
To connect, there are three pieces of information required: Authentication, API URL, and WSDL URL.
Authentication
To authenticate, specify your User and Password. Note that you must append your Tenant to your User separated by an '@' character. For instance, if you normally log in with 'geraldg' and your Tenant is 'mycompany_mc1', then your User should be specified as 'geraldg@mycompany_mc1'.
API URL
The API URL may be specified either directly via APIURL, or it may be constructed from the Tenant, Service, and Host. The APIURL is constructed in the following format: <Host>/ccx/service/<Tenant>/<Service>.
WSDL URL
The WSDLURL may be specified in its entirety, or may be constructed from the Service and WSDLVersion connection properties. The WSDLURL is constructed in the following format: https://community.workday.com/sites/default/files/file-hosting/productionapi/<Service>/<WSDLVersion>/<Service>.wsdl
When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.
Windows
If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.
Linux
If you are installing the CData ODBC Driver for Workday in a Linux environment, the driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties.
/etc/odbc.ini
[CData Workday Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Workday
Description = My Description
User = myuser
Password = mypassword
Tenant = mycompany_gm1
Host = https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com
For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).
Load the RODBC Package
To use the driver, download the RODBC package. In RStudio, click Tools -> Install Packages and enter RODBC in the Packages box.
After installing the RODBC package, the following line loads the package:
library(RODBC)
Note: This article uses RODBC version 1.3-12. Using Microsoft R Open, you can test with the same version, using the checkpoint capabilities of Microsoft's MRAN repository. The checkpoint command enables you to install packages from a snapshot of the CRAN repository, hosted on the MRAN repository. The snapshot taken Jan. 1, 2016 contains version 1.3-12.
library(checkpoint)
checkpoint("2016-01-01")
Connect to Workday Data as an ODBC Data Source
You can connect to a DSN in R with the following line:
conn <- odbcConnect("CData Workday Source")
Schema Discovery
The driver models Workday APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:
sqlTables(conn)
Execute SQL Queries
Use the sqlQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Workday API.
workers <- sqlQuery(conn, "SELECT Worker_Reference_WID, Legal_Name_Last_Name FROM Workers WHERE Legal_Name_Last_Name = 'Morgan'", believeNRows=FALSE, rows_at_time=1)
You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:
View(workers)
Plot Workday Data
You can now analyze Workday data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:
par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2))
barplot(workers$Legal_Name_Last_Name, main="Workday Workers", names.arg = workers$Worker_Reference_WID, horiz=TRUE)