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Analyze Salesforce Data in R


Use standard R functions and the development environment of your choice to analyze Salesforce data with the CData JDBC Driver for Salesforce.

Access Salesforce data with pure R script and standard SQL on any machine where R and Java can be installed. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for Salesforce and the RJDBC package to work with remote Salesforce 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 Salesforce and visualize Salesforce data by calling standard R functions.

About Salesforce Data Integration

Accessing and integrating live data from Salesforce has never been easier with CData. Customers rely on CData connectivity to:

  • Access to custom entities and fields means Salesforce users get access to all of Salesforce.
  • Create atomic and batch update operations.
  • Read, write, update, and delete their Salesforce data.
  • Leverage the latest Salesforce features and functionalities with support for SOAP API versions 30.0.
  • See improved performance based on SOQL support to push complex queries down to Salesforce servers.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to perform actions like creating, retrieving, aborting, and deleting jobs, uploading and downloading attachments and documents, and more.

Users frequently integrate Salesforce data with:

  • other ERPs, marketing automation, HCMs, and more.
  • preferred data tools like Power BI, Tableau, Looker, and more.
  • databases and data warehouses.

For more information on how CData solutions work with Salesforce, check out our Salesforce integration page.


Getting Started


Install R

You can match the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running open R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open 3.2.3, which is preconfigured to install packages from the Jan. 1, 2016 snapshot of the CRAN repository. This snapshot ensures reproducibility.

Load the RJDBC Package

To use the driver, download the RJDBC package. After installing the RJDBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RJDBC)

Connect to Salesforce as a JDBC Data Source

You will need the following information to connect to Salesforce as a JDBC data source:

  • Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.salesforce.SalesforceDriver
  • Classpath: Set this to the location of the driver JAR. By default this is the lib subfolder of the installation folder.

The DBI functions, such as dbConnect and dbSendQuery, provide a unified interface for writing data access code in R. Use the following line to initialize a DBI driver that can make JDBC requests to the CData JDBC Driver for Salesforce:

driver <- JDBC(driverClass = "cdata.jdbc.salesforce.SalesforceDriver", classPath = "MyInstallationDir\lib\cdata.jdbc.salesforce.jar", identifier.quote = "'")

You can now use DBI functions to connect to Salesforce and execute SQL queries. Initialize the JDBC connection with the dbConnect function.

There are several authentication methods available for connecting to Salesforce: Login, OAuth, and SSO. The Login method requires you to have the username, password, and security token of the user.

If you do not have access to the username and password or do not wish to require them, you can use OAuth authentication.

SSO (single sign-on) can be used by setting the SSOProperties, SSOLoginUrl, and TokenUrl connection properties, which allow you to authenticate to an identity provider. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for more information.

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Salesforce JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.salesforce.jar

Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

Below is a sample dbConnect call, including a typical JDBC connection string:

conn <- dbConnect(driver,"jdbc:salesforce:User=username;Password=password;SecurityToken=Your_Security_Token;")

Schema Discovery

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

dbListTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

You can use the dbGetQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Salesforce API:

account <- dbGetQuery(conn,"SELECT Contact.Name, SUM(Account.AnnualRevenue) FROM Contact, Account GROUP BY Contact.Name")

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

View(account)

Plot Salesforce Data

You can now analyze Salesforce 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(account$AnnualRevenue, main="Salesforce Account", names.arg = account$Industry, horiz=TRUE)

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the Salesforce Driver to get started:

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