Connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central Data in RapidMiner

This article shows how you can easily integrate the CData JDBC driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central into your processes in RapidMiner. This article uses the CData JDBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central to transfer Dynamics 365 Business Central data to a process in RapidMiner.

Connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central in RapidMiner as a JDBC Data Source

You can follow the procedure below to establish a JDBC connection to Dynamics 365 Business Central:

1. Add a new database driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central: Click Connections -> Manage Database Drivers.
2. In the resulting wizard, click the Add button and enter a name for the connection.
3. Enter the prefix for the JDBC URL: jdbc:d365businesscentral:
4. Enter the path to the cdata.jdbc.d365businesscentral.jar file, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
5. Enter the driver class: cdata.jdbc.d365businesscentral.D365BusinessCentralDriver
6. Create a new Dynamics 365 Business Central connection: Click Connections -> Manage Database Connections.
7. Enter a name for your connection.
8. For Database System, select the Dynamics 365 Business Central driver you configured previously.
9. Enter your connection string in the Host box.

   To authenticate to Dynamics 365 Business Central, you must provide the User and AccessKey properties.

   To obtain the User and AccessKey values, navigate to the Users page in Dynamics 365 Business Central and then click on Edit. The User Name and Web Service Access Key values are what you will enter as the User and AccessKey connection string properties. Note that the User Name is not your email address. It is a shortened user name.

   To connect to data, specify OrganizationUrl. If you have multiple companies in your organization, you must also specify the Company to indicate which company you would like to connect to. Company does not need to be specified if you have only one company.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

   For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Dynamics 365 Business Central JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.d365businesscentral.jar

   Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

   A typical connection string is below:

   OrganizationUrl=https://myaccount.financials.dynamics.com/;
10. Enter your username and password if necessary.

You can now use your Dynamics 365 Business Central connection with the various RapidMiner operators in your process. To retrieve Dynamics 365 Business Central data, drag the Retrieve operator from the Operators view. With the Retrieve operator selected, you can then define which table to retrieve in the Parameters view by clicking the folder icon next to the "repository entry." In the resulting Repository Browser, you can expand your connection node to select the desired example set.

Finally, wire the output to the Retrieve process to a result, and run the process to see the Dynamics 365 Business Central data.