Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the Workday ODBC Driver to get started:

 Download Now

Learn more:

Workday Icon Workday ODBC Driver

The Workday ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from Workday, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Workday data like you would a database - read, write, and update Workday Cash Management, Compensation, Financial Management, Payroll, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

Replicate Workday Data from PowerShell



Write a quick PowerShell script to query Workday data. Use connectivity to the live data to replicate Workday data to SQL Server.



The CData ODBC Driver for Workday enables out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft's built-in support for ODBC. The ODBC driver instantly integrates connectivity to the real Workday data with PowerShell.

You can use the .NET Framework Provider for ODBC built into PowerShell to quickly automate integration tasks like replicating Workday data to other databases. This article shows how to replicate Workday data to SQL Server in 5 lines of code.

You can also write PowerShell code to download Workday data. See the examples below.

Create an ODBC Data Source for Workday

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, there are three pieces of information required: Authentication, API URL, and WSDL URL.

Authentication

To authenticate, specify your User and Password. Note that you must append your Tenant to your User separated by an '@' character. For instance, if you normally log in with 'geraldg' and your Tenant is 'mycompany_mc1', then your User should be specified as 'geraldg@mycompany_mc1'.

API URL

The API URL may be specified either directly via APIURL, or it may be constructed from the Tenant, Service, and Host. The APIURL is constructed in the following format: <Host>/ccx/service/<Tenant>/<Service>.

WSDL URL

The WSDLURL may be specified in its entirety, or may be constructed from the Service and WSDLVersion connection properties. The WSDLURL is constructed in the following format: https://community.workday.com/sites/default/files/file-hosting/productionapi/<Service>/<WSDLVersion>/<Service>.wsdl

Connect to Workday

The code below shows how to use the DSN to initialize the connection to Workday data in PowerShell:

$conn = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcConnection $conn.ConnectionString = "DSN=CData Workday Source x64"

Back Up Workday Data to SQL Server

After you enable caching, you can use the code below to replicate data to SQL Server.

Set the following connection properties to configure the caching database:

  • CacheProvider: The name of the ADO.NET provider. This can be found in the Machine.config for your version of .NET. For example, to configure SQL Server, enter System.Data.SqlClient.

  • CacheConnection: The connection string of properties required to connect to the database. Below is an example for SQL Server:

    Server=localhost;Database=RSB;User Id=sqltest;Password=sqltest;

The SQL query in the example can be used to refresh the entire cached table, including its schema. Any already existing cache is deleted.

$conn.Open() # Create and execute the SQL Query $SQL = "CACHE DROP EXISTING SELECT * FROM " + $Workers $cmd = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcCommand($sql,$conn) $count = $cmd.ExecuteNonQuery() $conn.Close()

The driver gives you complete control over the caching functionality. See the help documentation for more caching commands and usage examples. See the help documentation for steps to replicate to other databases.

Other Operations

To retrieve Workday data in PowerShell, call the Fill method of the OdbcDataAdapter method. To execute data manipulation commands, initialize the OdbcCommand object and then call ExecuteNonQuery. Below are some more examples commands to Workday through the .NET Framework Provider for ODBC:

Retrieve Workday Data

$sql="SELECT Worker_Reference_WID, Legal_Name_Last_Name from Workers" $da= New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcDataAdapter($sql, $conn) $dt= New-Object System.Data.DataTable $da.Fill($dt) $dt.Rows | foreach { $dt.Columns | foreach ($col in dt{ Write-Host $1[$_] } }