How to create Dynamics 365 Business Central federated tables in MySQL

You can use the SQL Gateway to configure a MySQL remoting service and set up federated tables for Dynamics 365 Business Central data. The service is a daemon process that provides a MySQL interface to the CData ODBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central: After you have started the service, you can create a server and tables using the FEDERATED Storage Engine in MySQL. You can then work with Dynamics 365 Business Central data just as you would local MySQL tables.

Connect to Dynamics 365 Business Central Data

If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can use the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to configure the DSN. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.

To authenticate to Dynamics 365 Business Central, you must provide the User and AccessKey properties.

To obtain the User and AccessKey values, navigate to the Users page in Dynamics 365 Business Central and then click on Edit. The User Name and Web Service Access Key values are what you will enter as the User and AccessKey connection string properties. Note that the User Name is not your email address. It is a shortened user name.

To connect to data, specify OrganizationUrl. If you have multiple companies in your organization, you must also specify the Company to indicate which company you would like to connect to. Company does not need to be specified if you have only one company.

Configure the SQL Gateway

See the SQL Gateway Overview to set up connectivity to Dynamics 365 Business Central data as a virtual MySQL database. You will configure a MySQL remoting service that listens for MySQL requests from clients. The service can be configured in the SQL Gateway UI.

Create a FEDERATED Server and Tables for Dynamics 365 Business Central Data

After you have configured and started the service, create a FEDERATED server to simplify the process of creating FEDERATED tables:

Create a FEDERATED Server

The following statement will create a FEDERATED server based on the ODBC Driver for Dynamics 365 Business Central. Note that the username and password of the FEDERATED server must match a user account you defined on the Users tab of the SQL Gateway.

CREATE SERVER fedD365BusinessCentral
FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER mysql
OPTIONS (USER 'sql_gateway_user', PASSWORD 'sql_gateway_passwd', HOST 'sql_gateway_host', PORT ####, DATABASE 'CData D365BusinessCentral Sys');

Create a FEDERATED Table

To create a FEDERATED table using our newly created server, use the CONNECTION keyword and pass the name of the FEDERATED server and the remote table (Accounts). Refer to the following template for the statement to create a FEDERATED table:

CREATE TABLE fed_accounts (
  ...,
  accountid  TYPE(LEN),
  name  TYPE(LEN),
  ...,
)
ENGINE=FEDERATED
DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
CONNECTION='fedD365BusinessCentral/accounts';

NOTE: The table schema for the FEDERATED table must match the remote table schema exactly. You can always connect directly to the MySQL remoting service using any MySQL client and run a SHOW CREATE TABLE query to get the table schema.

Execute Queries

You can now execute queries to the Dynamics 365 Business Central FEDERATED tables from any tool that can connect to MySQL, which is particularly useful if you need to JOIN data from a local table with data from Dynamics 365 Business Central. Refer to the following example:

SELECT 
  fed_accounts.accountid, 
  local_table.custom_field 
FROM 
  local_table 
JOIN 
  fed_accounts 
ON 
  local_table.foreign_accountid = fed_accounts.accountid;