Analyze Sage X3 Cloud Data in R via ODBC

Access Sage X3 Cloud data with pure R script and standard SQL. You can use the CData ODBC Driver for Sage X3 Cloud and the RODBC package to work with remote Sage X3 Cloud data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to Sage X3 Cloud data and visualize Sage X3 Cloud data in R.

Install R

You can complement the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open (MRO).

Connect to Sage X3 Cloud as an ODBC Data Source

Information for connecting to Sage X3 Cloud follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments.

Sage X3 Cloud uses the OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials flow, and an X-API-Key is also required for API access. Set AuthScheme to OAuth and specify the following connection properties:

• URL: The base URL of your Sage X3 Cloud instance.
• OAuthAccessTokenUrl: The OAuth token endpoint (e.g., https://your-auth-domain/oauth/token).
• OAuthClientId: Your OAuth application client ID.
• OAuthClientSecret: Your OAuth application client secret.
• Audience: The API audience value for the token request.
• XAPIKey: The X-API-Key provided by your Sage X3 Cloud administrator.
• Folder: The Sage X3 folder name (e.g., SEED). This folder is used as the default schema.
• Folders (optional): A comma-separated list of Sage X3 folders (e.g., SEED,PERF). Each folder is exposed as a separate schema, so you can query across folders with the Schema.Table syntax.

The driver obtains an access token with the Client Credentials flow and sends it with the X-API-Key on every API request. With InitiateOAuth set to GETANDREFRESH (the default), the driver acquires and refreshes the token automatically.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Windows

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.

Linux

If you are installing the CData ODBC Driver for Sage X3 Cloud in a Linux environment, the driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties.

/etc/odbc.ini

[CData SageX3Cloud Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Sage X3 Cloud
Description = My Description
AuthScheme = OAuth
URL = https://x3server/
OAuthAccessTokenUrl = https://auth-domain/oauth/token
OAuthClientId = your_client_id
OAuthClientSecret = your_client_secret
Audience = https://api-audience
XAPIKey = your_api_key
Folder = SEED

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Load the RODBC Package

To use the driver, download the RODBC package. In RStudio, click Tools -> Install Packages and enter RODBC in the Packages box.

After installing the RODBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RODBC)

Note: This article uses RODBC version 1.3-12. Using Microsoft R Open, you can test with the same version, using the checkpoint capabilities of Microsoft's MRAN repository. The checkpoint command enables you to install packages from a snapshot of the CRAN repository, hosted on the MRAN repository. The snapshot taken Jan. 1, 2016 contains version 1.3-12.

library(checkpoint)
checkpoint("2016-01-01")

Connect to Sage X3 Cloud Data as an ODBC Data Source

You can connect to a DSN in R with the following line:

conn <- odbcConnect("CData SageX3Cloud Source")

Schema Discovery

The driver models Sage X3 Cloud APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

sqlTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

Use the sqlQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Sage X3 Cloud API.

bpcustomer <- sqlQuery(conn, "SELECT BPCNUM, BPCNAM FROM BPCUSTOMER WHERE BPCNUM = 'MARTIN'", believeNRows=FALSE, rows_at_time=1)

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View(bpcustomer)

Plot Sage X3 Cloud Data

You can now analyze Sage X3 Cloud data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:

par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2))
barplot(bpcustomer$BPCNAM, main="Sage X3 Cloud BPCUSTOMER", names.arg = bpcustomer$BPCNUM, horiz=TRUE)