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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 Dynamics 365 Data Provider.
This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the Dynamics 365 via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Dynamics 365. 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.
About Dynamics 365 Data Integration
CData simplifies access and integration of live Microsoft Dynamics 365 data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:
- Read and write data in the full Dynamics 365 ecosystem: Sales, Customer Service, Finance & Operations, Marketing, and more.
- Extend the native features of Dynamics CRM with customizable caching and intelligent query aggregation and separation.
- Authenticate securely with Dynamics 365 in a variety of ways, including Azure Active Directory, Azure Managed Service Identity credentials, and Azure Service Principal using either a client secret or a certificate.
- Use SQL stored procedures to manage their Dynamics 365 entities - listing, creating, and removing associations between entities.
CData customers use our Dynamics 365 connectivity solutions for a variety of reasons, whether they're looking to replicate their data into a data warehouse (alongside other data sources) or analyze live Dynamics 365 data from their preferred data tools inside the Microsoft ecosystem (Power BI, Excel, etc.) or with external tools (Tableau, Looker, etc.).
Getting Started
See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.
- 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.
- Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
- Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData Dynamics 365 Data Source".
Enter your data source connection information.
Edition and OrganizationUrl are required connection properties. The Dynamics 365 connector supports connecting to the following editions: CustomerService, FieldService, FinOpsOnline, FinOpsOnPremise, HumanResources, Marketing, ProjectOperations and Sales.
For Dynamics 365 Business Central, use the separate Dynamics 365 Business Central driver.
OrganizationUrl is the URL to your Dynamics 365 organization. For instance, https://orgcb42e1d0.crm.dynamics.com
Below is a typical connection string:
OrganizationUrl=https://myaccount.operations.dynamics.com/;Edition=Sales;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH
- If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting Dynamics365Entities as our entity connection in App.Config.
- 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 , update, delete, and insert commands. For example:
Dynamics365Entities context = new Dynamics365Entities();
var goalheadingsQuery = from goalheadings in context.GoalHeadings
select goalheadings;
foreach (var result in goalheadingsQuery) {
Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.GoalHeadingId);
}
See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.