How to connect PolyBase to Salesforce Marketing

PolyBase for SQL Server allows you to query external data by using the same Transact-SQL syntax used to query a database table. When paired with the CData ODBC Driver for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you get access to your Salesforce Marketing data directly alongside your SQL Server data. This article describes creating an external data source and external tables to grant access to live Salesforce Marketing data using T-SQL queries.

NOTE: PolyBase is only available on SQL Server 19 and above, and only for Standard SQL Server.

The CData ODBC drivers offer unmatched performance for interacting with live Salesforce Marketing data using PolyBase due to optimized data processing built into the driver. When you issue complex SQL queries from SQL Server to Salesforce Marketing, the driver pushes down supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Salesforce Marketing and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations (often SQL functions and JOIN operations) client-side. And with PolyBase, you can also join SQL Server data with Salesforce Marketing data, using a single query to pull data from distributed sources.

Connect to Salesforce Marketing

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. To create an external data source in SQL Server using PolyBase, configure a System DSN (CData Salesforce Marketing Sys is created automatically).

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.

Click "Test Connection" to ensure that the DSN is connected to Salesforce Marketing properly. Navigate to the Tables tab to review the table definitions for Salesforce Marketing.

Create an External Data Source for Salesforce Marketing Data

After configuring the connection, you need to create a master encryption key and a credential database for the external data source.

Creating a Master Encryption Key

Execute the following SQL command to create a new master key, 'ENCRYPTION,' to encrypt the credentials for the external data source.

CREATE MASTER KEY ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = 'password';

Creating a Credential Database

Execute the following SQL command to create credentials for the external data source connected to Salesforce Marketing data.

NOTE: IDENTITY and SECRET correspond with the User and Password properties for Salesforce Marketing.

CREATE DATABASE SCOPED CREDENTIAL sfmarketingcloud_creds
WITH IDENTITY = 'sfmarketingcloud_username', SECRET = 'sfmarketingcloud_password';

Create an External Data Source for Salesforce Marketing

Execute a CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE SQL command to create an external data source for Salesforce Marketing with PolyBase:

• Set the LOCATION parameter , using the DSN and credentials configured earlier.

For Salesforce Marketing, set SERVERNAME to the URL or address for your server (e.g. 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1' for local servers; the remote URL for remote servers). Leave PORT empty. PUSHDOWN is set to ON by default, meaning the ODBC Driver can leverage server-side processing for complex queries.

CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE cdata_sfmarketingcloud_source
WITH ( 
  LOCATION = 'odbc://SERVER_URL',
  CONNECTION_OPTIONS = 'DSN=CData Salesforce Marketing Sys',
  -- PUSHDOWN = ON | OFF,
  CREDENTIAL = sfmarketingcloud_creds
);

Create External Tables for Salesforce Marketing

After creating the external data source, use CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE statements to link to Salesforce Marketing data from your SQL Server instance. The table column definitions must match those exposed by the CData ODBC Driver for Salesforce Marketing Cloud. You can refer to the Tables tab of the DSN Configuration Wizard to see the table definition.

Sample CREATE TABLE Statement

The statement to create an external table based on a Salesforce Marketing Subscriber would look similar to the following:

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE Subscriber(
  Id [nvarchar](255) NULL,
  Status [nvarchar](255) NULL,
  ...
) WITH ( 
  LOCATION='Subscriber',
  DATA_SOURCE=cdata_sfmarketingcloud_source
);

Having created external tables for Salesforce Marketing in your SQL Server instance, you are now able to query local and remote data simultaneously. Thanks to built-in query processing in the CData ODBC Driver, you know that as much query processing as possible is being pushed to Salesforce Marketing, freeing up local resources and computing power. Download a free, 30-day trial of the ODBC Driver for Salesforce Marketing and start working with live Salesforce Marketing data alongside your SQL Server data today.