Learn more
 

LINQ to SAP Data


LINQ offers versatile querying capabilities within the .NET Framework (v3.0+), offering a straightforward method for programmatic data access through CData ADO.NET Data Providers. In this article, we demonstrate the use of LINQ to retrieve information from the SAP Data Provider.

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the SAP via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for SAP. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

About SAP Data Integration

CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from SAP. Customers use CData connectivity to:

  • Access every edition of SAP, including SAP R/3, SAP NetWeaver, SAP ERP / ECC 6.0, and SAP S/4 HANA on premises data that is exposed by the RFC.
  • Perform actions like sending IDoc or IDoc XML files to the server and creating schemas for functions or queries through SQL stored procedures.
  • Connect optimally depending on where a customer's SAP instance is hosted.

While most users leverage our tools to replicate SAP data to databases or data warehouses, many also integrate live SAP data with analytics tools such as Tableau, Power BI, and Excel.


Getting Started


See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

  1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
  2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
  3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData SAP Data Source".

  4. Enter your data source connection information.

    You can connect to SAP systems using either librfc32.dll, librfc32u.dll, NetWeaver, or Web Services (SOAP). Set the ConnectionType connection property to CLASSIC (librfc32.dll), CLASSIC_UNICODE (librfc32u.dll), NETWEAVER, or SOAP.

    If you are using the SOAP interface, set the Client, RFCUrl, SystemNumber, User, and Password properties, under the Authentication section.

    Otherwise, set Host, User, Password, Client, and SystemNumber.

    Note: We do not distribute the librfc32.dll or other SAP assemblies. You must find them from your SAP installation and install them on your machine.

    For more information, see this guide on obtaining the connection properties needed to connect to any SAP system.

    Below is a typical connection string:

    Host=sap.mydomain.com;User=EXT90033;Password=xxx;Client=800;System Number=09;ConnectionType=Classic;Location=C:/mysapschemafolder;
  5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting SAPERPEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
  6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select commands. For example:

SAPERPEntities context = new SAPERPEntities(); var maraQuery = from mara in context.MARA select mara; foreach (var result in maraQuery) { Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.MANDT, result.MANDT); }

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the SAP ERP Data Provider to get started:

 Download Now

Learn more:

SAP ERP Icon SAP ERP ADO.NET Provider

Straightforward SAP ERP integration. Now accessing SAP RFC's from .NET applications is as easy as querying SQL Server.

In this article

Related articles