Analyze SAP Ariba Procurement Data in R

Access SAP Ariba Procurement 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 SAP Ariba Procurement and the RJDBC package to work with remote SAP Ariba Procurement 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 SAP Ariba Procurement and visualize SAP Ariba Procurement data by calling standard R functions.

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:

Connect to SAP Ariba Procurement as a JDBC Data Source

You will need the following information to connect to SAP Ariba Procurement as a JDBC data source:

• Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.saparibaprocurement.SAPAribaProcurementDriver
• 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 SAP Ariba Procurement:

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

In order to connect with SAP Ariba Procurement, set the following:

• ANID: Your Ariba Network ID.
• ANID: Specify which API you would like the provider to retrieve SAP Ariba data from. Select the Buyer or Supplier API based on your business role (possible values are PurchaseOrdersBuyerAPIV1 or PurchaseOrdersSupplierAPIV1).
• Environment: Indicate whether you are connecting to a test or production environment (possible values are TEST or PRODUCTION).

Authenticating with OAuth

After setting connection properties, you need to configure OAuth connectivity to authenticate.

• Set AuthScheme to OAuthClient.
• Register an application with the service to obtain the APIKey, OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret.

  For more information on creating an OAuth application, refer to the Help documentation.

Automatic OAuth

After setting the following, you are ready to connect:

APIKey: The Application key in your app settings. OAuthClientId: The OAuth Client Id in your app settings. OAuthClientSecret: The OAuth Secret in your app settings.

When you connect, the provider automatically completes the OAuth process:

1. The provider obtains an access token from SAP Ariba and uses it to request data.
2. The provider refreshes the access token automatically when it expires.
3. The OAuth values are saved in memory relative to the location specified in OAuthSettingsLocation.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

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:

Schema Discovery

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

Execute SQL Queries

You can use the dbGetQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the SAP Ariba Procurement API:

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

Plot SAP Ariba Procurement Data

You can now analyze SAP Ariba Procurement 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: