We are proud to share our inclusion in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools. We believe this recognition reflects the differentiated business outcomes CData delivers to our customers.
Get the Report →Analyze Bullhorn CRM Data in R
Use standard R functions and the development environment of your choice to analyze Bullhorn CRM data with the CData JDBC Driver for Bullhorn CRM.
Access Bullhorn CRM data with pure R script and standard SQL on any machine where R and Java can be installed. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for Bullhorn CRM and the RJDBC package to work with remote Bullhorn CRM 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 Bullhorn CRM and visualize Bullhorn CRM data by calling standard R functions.
Install R
You can match the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running open R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open 3.2.3, which is preconfigured to install packages from the Jan. 1, 2016 snapshot of the CRAN repository. This snapshot ensures reproducibility.
Load the RJDBC Package
To use the driver, download the RJDBC package. After installing the RJDBC package, the following line loads the package:
library(RJDBC)
Connect to Bullhorn CRM as a JDBC Data Source
You will need the following information to connect to Bullhorn CRM as a JDBC data source:
- Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.bullhorncrm.BullhornCRMDriver
- Classpath: Set this to the location of the driver JAR. By default this is the lib subfolder of the installation folder.
The DBI functions, such as dbConnect and dbSendQuery, provide a unified interface for writing data access code in R. Use the following line to initialize a DBI driver that can make JDBC requests to the CData JDBC Driver for Bullhorn CRM:
driver <- JDBC(driverClass = "cdata.jdbc.bullhorncrm.BullhornCRMDriver", classPath = "MyInstallationDir\lib\cdata.jdbc.bullhorncrm.jar", identifier.quote = "'")
You can now use DBI functions to connect to Bullhorn CRM and execute SQL queries. Initialize the JDBC connection with the dbConnect function.
Begin by providing your Bullhorn CRM account credentials in the following:
- DataCenterCode: Set this to the data center code which responds to your data center. Refer to the list of data-center-specific Bullhorn API URLs: https://bullhorn.github.io/Data-Center-URLs/
If you are uncertain about your data center code, codes like CLS2, CLS21, etc. are cluster IDs that are contained in a user's browser URL (address bar) once they are logged in.
Example: https://cls21.bullhornstaffing.com/BullhornSTAFFING/MainFrame.jsp?#no-ba... indicates that the logged in user is on CLS21.
Authenticating with OAuth
Bullhorn CRM uses the OAuth 2.0 authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, create and configure a custom OAuth app. See the Help documentation for more information.
Built-in Connection String Designer
For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Bullhorn CRM JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.
java -jar cdata.jdbc.bullhorncrm.jar
Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

Below is a sample dbConnect call, including a typical JDBC connection string:
conn <- dbConnect(driver,"jdbc:bullhorncrm:DataCenterCode=CLS33;OAuthClientId=myoauthclientid;OAuthClientSecret=myoauthclientsecret;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH")
Schema Discovery
The driver models Bullhorn CRM APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:
dbListTables(conn)
Execute SQL Queries
You can use the dbGetQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Bullhorn CRM API:
candidate <- dbGetQuery(conn,"SELECT Id, CandidateName FROM Candidate WHERE CandidateName = 'Jane Doe'")
You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:
View(candidate)
Plot Bullhorn CRM Data
You can now analyze Bullhorn CRM 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(candidate$CandidateName, main="Bullhorn CRM Candidate", names.arg = candidate$Id, horiz=TRUE)
