Sage 50 UK Reporting and Star Schemas in OBIEE

The CData ODBC Driver for Sage 50 UK is a standard database driver that can integrate real-time access to Sage 50 UK data into your data warehouse or directly into your reporting tool. This article shows how to bypass the data warehouse and import operational Sage 50 UK data into Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE).

See the knowledge base for ODBC integrations with ETL tools like Informatica PowerCenter. For an ETL solution into Oracle Warehouse Builder, use the driver with the Oracle ODBC Gateway to Access Sage 50 UK Data as a Remote Oracle Database.

Connect to Sage 50 UK 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.

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.

When you configure the DSN, 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.

Import Sage 50 UK Metadata

Follow the steps below to use the OBIEE Client Tools to import Sage 50 UK metadata into an OBIEE repository. You can then integrate Sage 50 UK data into your business models.

1. Open the Administration Tool and click File -> New Repository.

2. In the Connection Type menu, select ODBC 3.5 and select the CData DSN.
3. Select the metadata types you want to import under the Relational Sources option and then select Sage 50 UK tables.