LINQ to Dynamics 365 Data

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Dynamics 365 ADO.NET Provider

Rapidly create and deploy powerful .NET applications that integrate with Dynamics 365.

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LINQ provides general-purpose query facilities in .NET Framework 3.0 and above and provides one easy way to programmatically access data through from CData ADO.NET Data Providers. This example uses LINQ to access information from the Dynamics 365 Data Provider.

This article demonstrates how to use LINQ to access Dynamics 365 tables through the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Dynamics 365. To do this you will LINQ to Entity Framework, which is used to generate the connection and can be used with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data via 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 Dynamics 365 Data Source".

  4. 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
  5. 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.
  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 , 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.