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The Certinia ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from Certinia, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Certinia data like you would a database - read, write, and update Certinia Invoices, Expenses, Accounts, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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DataBind Controls to Certinia Data in C++Builder


DataBind to Certinia data in C++Builder with standard components and controls.

The CData ODBC Driver for Certinia makes it easy to integrate connectivity to live Certinia data with standard data access components in C++Builder. This article shows how to create a simple visual component library (VCL) application in C++Builder that connects to Certinia data, executes queries, and displays the results in a grid. An additional section shows how to use FireDAC components to execute commands from code.

Create a Connection to Certinia Data

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

There are several authentication methods available for connecting to Certinia: login credentials, SSO, and OAuth.

Authenticating with a Login and Token

Set the User and Password to your login credentials. Additionally, set the SecurityToken. By default, the SecurityToken is required, but you can make it optional by allowing a range of trusted IP addresses.

To disable the security token:

  1. Log in to Certinia and enter "Network Access" in the Quick Find box in the setup section.
  2. Add your IP address to the list of trusted IP addresses.

To obtain the security token:

  1. Open the personal information page on certinia.com.
  2. Click the link to reset your security token. The token will be emailed to you.
  3. Specify the security token in the SecurityToken connection property or append it to the Password.

Authenticating with OAuth

If you do not have access to the user name and password or do not want to require them, use the OAuth user consent flow. See the OAuth section in the Help for an authentication guide.

Connecting to Certinia Sandbox Accounts

Set UseSandbox to true (false by default) to use a Certinia sandbox account. Ensure that you specify a sandbox user name in User.

You can then follow the steps below to use the Data Explorer to create a FireDAC connection to Certinia.

  1. In a new VCL Forms application, expand the FireDAC node in the Data Explorer.
  2. Right-click the ODBC Data Source node in the Data Explorer.
  3. Click Add New Connection.
  4. Enter a name for the connection.
  5. In the FireDAC Connection Editor that appears, set the DataSource property to the name of the ODBC DSN for Certinia.

Create VCL Applications with Connectivity to Certinia Data

Follow the procedure below to start querying Certinia data from a simple VCL application that displays the results of a query in a grid.

  1. Drop a TFDConnection component onto the form and set the following properties:

    • ConnectionDefName: Select the FireDAC connection to Certinia.
    • Connected: Select True from the menu and, in the dialog that appears, enter your credentials.

  2. Drop a TFDQuery component onto the form and set the properties below:

    • Connection: Set this property to the TFDConnection component, if this component is not already specified.

    • SQL: Click the button in the SQL property and enter a query. For example:

      SELECT BillingState, Name FROM Account WHERE Industry = 'Floppy Disks'
    • Active: Set this property to true.

  3. Drop a TDataSource component onto the form and set the following property:

    • DataSet: In the menu for this property, select the name of the TFDQuery component.

  4. Drop a TDBGrid control onto the form and set the following property:

    • DataSource: Select the name of the TDataSource.
  5. Drop a TFDGUIxWaitCursor onto the form — this is required to avoid a run-time error.

Execute Commands to Certinia with FireDAC Components

You can use the TFDConnection and TFQuery components to execute queries to Certinia data. This section provides Certinia-specific examples of executing queries with the TFQuery component.

Connect to Certinia Data

To connect to the data source, set the Connected property of the TFDConnection component to true. You can set the same properties from code:

FDConnection1->ConnectionDefName = "CData Certinia ODBC Source"; FDConnection1->Connected = true;

To connect the TFDQuery component to Certinia data, set the Connection property of the component. When a TFDQuery component is added at design time, its Connection property is automatically set to point to a TFDConnection on the form, as in the application above.

Create Parameterized Queries

To create a parameterized query, use the following syntax below:

FDQuery1->SQL->Text = "select * from Account where industry = :Industry"; FDQuery1->ParamByName("industry")->AsString = "Floppy Disks"; query->Open();

The example above binds a string-type input parameter by name and then opens the dataset that results.

Prepare the Statement

Preparing statements is costly in system resources and time. The connection must be active and open while a statement is prepared. By default, FireDAC prepares the query to avoid recompiling the same query over and over. To disable statement preparation, set ResourceOptions.DirectExecute to True; for example, when you need to execute a query only once.

Execute a Query

To execute a query that returns a result set, such as a select query, use the Open method. The Open method executes the query, returns the result set, and opens it. The Open method will return an error if the query does not produce a result set.

FDQuery1->SQL->Text := "select * from Account where industry = :Industry"; FDQuery1.ParamByName("industry")->AsString = "Floppy Disks"; FDQuery1->Open();

To execute a query that does not return a result set, use the ExecSQL method. The ExecSQL method will return an error if the query returns a result set. To retrieve the count of affected rows use the TFD.RowsAffected property.

FDQ.SQL.Text := "delete from Account where Id = :Id"; FDQuery1->Params->Items[0]->AsString = "x12345"; FDQuery1->ExecSQL(); AnsiString i = FDQuery1->RowsAffected;