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LINQ to Azure Analysis Services 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 Azure Analysis Services Data Provider.

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the Azure Analysis Services via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Azure Analysis Services. 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 Azure Analysis Services Data Source".

  4. Enter your data source connection information.

    To connect to Azure Analysis Services, set the Url property to a valid server, for instance, asazure://southcentralus.asazure.windows.net/server, in addition to authenticating. Optionally, set Database to distinguish which Azure database on the server to connect to.

    Azure Analysis Services uses the OAuth authentication standard. OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with Azure Analysis Services using the browser. You can connect without setting any connection properties for your user credentials. See the Help documentation for more information.

    Below is a typical connection string:

    URL=asazure://REGION.asazure.windows.net/server;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH
  5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting AASEntities 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:

AASEntities context = new AASEntities(); var customerQuery = from customer in context.Customer select customer; foreach (var result in customerQuery) { Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.Country); }

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

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