Connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central Data in DBeaver

The CData ODBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central enables access to live data from Dynamics 365 Business Central under the ODBC standard, allowing you work with Dynamics 365 Business Central data in a wide variety of BI, reporting, and ETL tools and directly, using familiar SQL queries. This article shows how to manage Dynamics 365 Business Central data with visual tools in DBeaver like the query browser.

The CData ODBC drivers offer unmatched performance for interacting with live Dynamics 365 Business Central data in DBeaver due to optimized data processing built into the driver. When you issue complex SQL queries from DBeaver to Dynamics 365 Business Central, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Dynamics 365 Business Central and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations (often SQL functions and JOIN operations) client-side. With built-in dynamic metadata querying, you can manage and analyze Dynamics 365 Business Central data.

Connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central

If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can configure the DSN using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the Help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.

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.

Finally, set the "Map To WVarchar connection property to False in the DSN Configuration window for the driver. This configuration will allow string types to be mapped to SQL_VARCHAR and prevent SQL_WVARCHAR types from being displayed as NULL.

Connecting to the Dynamics 365 Business Central ODBC Data Source in DBeaver

1. Open the DBeaver application and in the Database menu, select the New Database Connection option.
2. In the 'Connect to a database' window, select ODBC and click Next.
3. In the Database/Schema field, enter the DSN name (CData Dynamics 365 Business Central Source by default). It will be automatically added to the JDBC URL as well.
4. Click the Test Connection button. You should receive a 'Connected' message after DBeaver has detected the DSN, along with details about the driver if the connection is successful.

Query Dynamics 365 Business Central Data

You can now query information from the tables exposed by the data source connection. You can expand the database structure in order to view all the tables. You can retrieve the table's data by right-clicking on a table name and selecting View data. The data will then be available in the Data tab.

Free Trial & More Information

At this point, you have connected to live Dynamics 365 Business Central data from DBeaver. For more information, visit the CData ODBC Driver page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live Dynamics 365 Business Central data DBeaver today.