Build a Simple VCL Application for Salesforce Marketing Data

Embarcadero RAD Studio provides a development environment for Delphi and C++Builder applications. With the CData FireDAC Components for Salesforce Marketing, you gain access to live Salesforce Marketing data within RAD Studio, abstracting the data into tables, views, and stored procedures that can be used to retrieve and update Salesforce Marketing data. This article will walk through connecting to Salesforce Marketing and creating a simple VCL application with the Form Designer.

Creating a VCL Application for Salesforce Marketing Data

The following instructions show how to use the Form Designer to create a simple VCL Forms application that shows the basic FireDAC objects needed to connect to Salesforce Marketing from any application.

The following example populates a TDBGrid control.

1. Create a new VCL Forms Application.
2. Drop a TFDPhysSFMarketingCloudDriverLink and TFDConnection object onto the form.

3. Double-click the TFDConnection object. The FireDAC Connection Editor is displayed. Select "CData.SFMarketingCloud" in the DriverId menu and configure the connection properties.
   

   Authenticating to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud APIs

   Set the User and Password to your login credentials, or to the credentials for a sandbox user if you are connecting to a sandbox account.

   Connecting to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud APIs

   By default, the data provider connects to production environments. Set UseSandbox to true to use a Salesforce Marketing Cloud sandbox account.

   The default Instance is s7 of the Web Services API; however, if you use a different instance, you can set Instance.

4. Drop a TFDQuery object onto the form and set the properties below:
   • Connection - Set this property to the TFDConnection object, if this object is not already specified.
   • SQL - Click the button in the SQL property and enter a query.
   • Active - Set this property to true.
5. Drop a TDataSource object onto the form and set the following property:
   • DataSet - In the menu for this property, select the name of the TFDQuery object.
6. Drop a TDBGrid control onto the form and set the following property:
   • DataSource - Select the name of the TDataSource.

7. Drop a TFDGUIxWaitCursor onto the form. This is required to avoid a run-time error.

You now have an executable application that displays the results of the SQL Query set in the TFDQuery object.