Rapidly Develop SAP Business Warehouse-Driven Apps with Active Query Builder

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Leverage the Active Query Builder SQL interface and .NET data access to create data-driven WinForms and ASP.NET apps backed by SAP Business Warehouse.

Write standard .NET to expose SAP Business Warehouse data through an SQL interface: Active Query Builder helps developers write SQL interfaces; the CData ODBC Driver for SAP Business Warehouse enables standards-based access to SAP Business Warehouse. This integration uses the Microsoft ADO.NET Provider for ODBC as a bridge between the ODBC Driver and the Active Query Builder objects to build a visual SQL composer.

Connect to SAP Business Warehouse as an ODBC Data Source

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 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.

Use SQL to Interact with SAP Business Warehouse

Follow the steps below to create a WinForms visual query builder.

  1. Open Active Query Builder for .NET WinForms.
  2. In the new Windows Forms project go to the "File" menu and click "Connect..."
  3. Under Database Connections, click "Add..."
  4. Set your desired Connection Name (e.g. CData SAP Business Warehouse), set Connection Type to "ODBC" and locate your previously configured DSN in the "User/System" DSN dropdown.
  5. Click "OK" to save the new connection.
  6. Back in the Database Connection wizard, select the newly created connection and click "OK."
  7. Click "File" > "New Query" to create a QueryBuilder

You can now build queries visually: Double-click a table in the Columns Pane Area and an entity/relationship diagram is displayed in the Query Building Area. Columns that you select in the diagram are added to the query.

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the SAP Business Warehouse ODBC Driver to get started:

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Learn more:

SAP Business Warehouse Icon SAP Business Warehouse ODBC Driver

The SAP Business Warehouse ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from SAP Business Warehouse, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access SAP Business Warehouse data like you would a database - read, write, and update SAP Business Warehouse Tables, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.