Viewing SAP SuccessFactors 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 SuccessFactors, you gain access to live SAP SuccessFactors data within RAD Studio, abstracting the data into tables, views, and stored procedures that can be used to both retrieve and update SAP SuccessFactors data. This article will walk through connecting to SAP SuccessFactors using the Data Explorer.

Configure a Connection to SAP SuccessFactors

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.

You can authenticate to SAP Success Factors using Basic authentication or OAuth with SAML assertion.

Basic Authentication

You must provide values for the following properties to successfully authenticate to SAP Success Factors. Note that the provider will reuse the session opened by SAP Success Factors using cookies. Which means that your credentials will be used only on the first request to open the session. After that, cookies returned from SAP Success Factors will be used for authentication.

• Url: set this to the URL of the server hosting Success Factors. Some of the servers are listed in the SAP support documentation (external link).
• User: set this to the username of your account.
• Password: set this to the password of your account.
• CompanyId: set this to the unique identifier of your company.

OAuth Authentication

You must provide values for the following properties, which will be used to get the access token.

• Url: set this to the URL of the server hosting Success Factors. Some of the servers are listed in the SAP support documentation (external link).
• User: set this to the username of your account.
• CompanyId: set this to the unique identifier of your company.
• OAuthClientId: set this to the API Key that was generated in API Center.
• OAuthClientSecret: the X.509 private key used to sign SAML assertion. The private key can be found in the certificate you downloaded in Registering your OAuth Client Application.
• InitiateOAuth: set this to GETANDREFRESH.

Connecting to SAP SuccessFactors Data Using Data Explorer

You can create a simple application for displaying SAP SuccessFactors data by utilizing the CData FireDAC Components for SAP SuccessFactors 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 SuccessFactors.
6. Back in the Data Explorer, expand the tables for the connection.

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

8. Select the ExtAddressInfoTable 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 ExtAddressInfo data.