Viewing SAP Business Warehouse Data in RAD Studio Data Explorer

Embarcadero RAD Studio provides a development environment for Delphi and C++Builder applications. With the CData ODBC Driver for SAP Business Warehouse, you gain access to live SAP Business Warehouse data within RAD Studio, abstracting the data into tables, views, and stored procedures that can be used to both retrieve SAP Business Warehouse data. This article will walk through connecting to SAP Business Warehouse using the Data Explorer.

Configure a Connection to SAP Business Warehouse

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.

Connecting to SAP Business Warehouse Data Using Data Explorer

You can create a simple application for displaying SAP Business Warehouse data by utilizing the CData FireDAC Components for SAP Business Warehouse and a new VCL Forms Application:

1. Open the Data Explorer in RAD Studio and expand FireDAC.
2. Right-click the ODBC Data Source node in the Data Explorer.
3. Click Add New Connection.
4. Enter a name for the connection.
5. In the FireDAC Connection Editor that appears, set the DataSource property to the name of the ODBC DSN for SAP Business Warehouse.
6. Back in the Data Explorer, expand the views for the connection.

7. Create a new VCL Forms application and drag a view (for example: Sales) onto the form.

   
8. Select the SalesView object on the form and set the Active property to true.

9. Right-click on the object, bind visually, and link everything (*) to a new control (TStringGrid).

   

10. Arrange the TStringGrid on the form and run the application to see the Sales data.

    

Related Articles

Below you can find other articles for using the CData ODBC Driver with RAD Studio, Delphi, and C++ Builder.

• DataBind Controls to SAP Business Warehouse Data in C++Builder
• DataBind Controls to SAP Business Warehouse Data in Delphi
• Build a Simple VCL Application for SAP Business Warehouse Data