How to Access SAP Business Warehouse Data Using Entity Framework

Microsoft Entity Framework serves as an object-relational mapping framework for working with data represented as objects. Although Visual Studio offers the ADO.NET Entity Data Model wizard to automatically generate the Entity Model, this model-first approach may present challenges when your data source undergoes changes or when you require greater control over entity operations. In this article, we will delve into the code-first approach for accessing SAP Business Warehouse data through the CData ADO.NET Provider, providing you with more flexibility and control.

1. Open Visual Studio and create a new Windows Form Application. This article uses a C# project with .NET 4.5.
2. Run the command 'Install-Package EntityFramework' in the Package Manger Console in Visual Studio to install the latest release of Entity Framework.

3. Modify the App.config file in the project to add a reference to the SAP Business Warehouse Entity Framework 6 assembly and the connection string.

   To connect to SAP Business Warehouse, set the URL property to a valid SAP Business Warehouse server base URL. The driver must connect to SAP Business Warehouse instances hosted over HTTP with XMLA access.

   The driver supports the following authentication schemes via the AuthScheme property:

   • None: Anonymous authentication, if available on the server.
   • Basic: Set User and Password and set AuthScheme to Basic.
   • Kerberos: See the Using Kerberos section of the help documentation for the required Kerberos properties.

   By default, the driver attempts to negotiate SSL/TLS by checking the server's certificate against the system's trusted certificate store. To specify another certificate, see the SSLServerCert property for the available formats.

   
   <configuration>
      ... 
     <connectionStrings>
       <add name="SAPBusinessWarehouseContext" connectionString="Offline=False;URL=https://mysapserver:8000;AuthScheme=Basic;User=username;Password=password;" providerName="System.Data.CData.SAPBusinessWarehouse" />
     </connectionStrings>
     <entityFramework>
       <providers>
          ... 
         <provider invariantName="System.Data.CData.SAPBusinessWarehouse" type="System.Data.CData.SAPBusinessWarehouse.SAPBusinessWarehouseProviderServices, System.Data.CData.SAPBusinessWarehouse.Entities.EF6" />
       </providers>
     <entityFramework>
   </configuration>
   </code> 
   

4. Add a reference to System.Data.CData.SAPBusinessWarehouse.Entities.EF6.dll, located in the lib -> 4.0 subfolder in the installation directory.
5. Build the project at this point to ensure everything is working correctly. Once that's done, you can start coding using Entity Framework.
6. Add a new .cs file to the project and add a class to it. This will be your database context, and it will extend the DbContext class. In the example, this class is named SAPBusinessWarehouseContext. The following code example overrides the OnModelCreating method to make the following changes:
   • Remove PluralizingTableNameConvention from the ModelBuilder Conventions.
   • Remove requests to the MigrationHistory table.

   
   using System.Data.Entity;
   using System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure;
   using System.Data.Entity.ModelConfiguration.Conventions;
   
   class SAPBusinessWarehouseContext : DbContext {
     public SAPBusinessWarehouseContext() { }
   
     protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)
     {
       // To remove the requests to the Migration History table
       Database.SetInitializer<SAPBusinessWarehouseContext>(null);  
       // To remove the plural names    
       modelBuilder.Conventions.Remove<PluralizingTableNameConvention>();
     }  
   }
   

7. Create another .cs file and name it after the SAP Business Warehouse entity you are retrieving, for example, Sales. In this file, define both the Entity and the Entity Configuration, which will resemble the example below:

   
   using System.Data.Entity.ModelConfiguration;
   using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Schema;
   
   [System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Schema.Table("Sales")]
   public class Sales {
     [System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Key] 
     public System.String CustomerCount { get; set; }
     public System.String City { get; set; }
   }
       
   

8. Now that you have created an entity, add the entity to your context class:

   
   public DbSet<Sales> Sales { set; get; }
   

9. With the context and entity finished, you are now ready to query the data in a separate class. For example:

   SAPBusinessWarehouseContext context = new SAPBusinessWarehouseContext();
   context.Configuration.UseDatabaseNullSemantics = true;
   var query = from line in context.Sales select line;