Design BIRT Reports on Sage 50 UK Data

The CData JDBC Driver for Sage 50 UK integrates connectivity to Sage 50 UK APIs into your data-driven Java applications. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for Sage 50 UK with the BIRT (Business Intelligence Reporting Tools) platform to create BIRT reports that reflect changes to your data in real time.

1. If you have not already done so, install the BIRT Framework plugin and the Database Development plugin for Eclipse.
2. Click File -> New -> Report. The Report Design perspective is opened.
3. In the Data Explorer, right-click Data Sources and click New Data Source.
4. Select the Create from a Data Source Type in the Following List option and select JDBC Data Source.
5. Click Manage Drivers and add the driver JAR, located in the lib subfolder of the installation folder.
6. In the Database URL box, enter the JDBC URL containing the connection string.

   Note: Only Sage 50 UK 2012 and above are supported.

   The User and Password properties, under the Connection section, must be set to valid Sage 50 UK user credentials. These values will be the same used to log in to the Sage 50 UK software.

   Additionally, the URL property, under the Connection section, will need to be set to the address of the company dataset desired. To obtain the address, do the following:

   1. If you have not already done so, open the Sage 50 UK software.
   2. Click Tools -> Internet Options.
   3. Select the SData Settings tab.
   4. Click the Details button next to Sage 50 Accounts. A window is displayed containing a list of company names along with the address to their corresponding datasets.
   5. Set the URL property to the value in the address field next to the company desired.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

   For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Sage 50 UK JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.sage50uk.jar

   Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

   When you configure the JDBC URL, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

   A typical JDBC URL is below:

   jdbc:sage50uk:URL=http://your-server:5493/sdata/accounts50/GCRM/your-address;User=Manager;
7. Right-click the Data Sets folder and select the JDBC data source for Sage 50 UK.
8. In the resulting dialog, build the SELECT query to be used to retrieve the data for the report. This article uses the following query: SELECT Name, FinanceBalance FROM TradingAccounts
9. In the Palette, drag a Chart onto the editor. The chart wizard is displayed.
10. After selecting the chart type, drag columns onto the chart fields on the Select Data tab.
11. Click Run -> View Report -> In Web Viewer to view the report.

Your BIRT reports can now pick up any updates to Sage 50 UK data.

To publish the report to your application server, add the driver JAR to the BIRT Viewer's classpath. For more information, see the CData KB for guides to deploying the JDBC Driver on Java application servers.