LINQ to Salesforce CRM Analytics Data

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the Salesforce CRM Analytics via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Salesforce CRM Analytics. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData Salesforce CRM Analytics Data Source".

4. Enter your data source connection information.

   Salesforce CRM Analytics uses the OAuth 2 authentication standard. Obtain the OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret by registering an app with Salesforce CRM Analytics.

   See the Getting Started section of the Help documentation for an authentication guide.

   Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

   If the connected Salesforce org has MFA enforcement enabled, set MFACode to the time-based one-time passcode (TOTP) generated by your authenticator app (such as Salesforce Authenticator or Google Authenticator). MFACode applies alongside the standard OAuth flow.

   Below is a typical connection string:

   OAuthClientId=MyConsumerKey;OAuthClientSecret=MyConsumerSecret;CallbackURL=http://localhost:portNumber;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;MFACode=YourMFACode


5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting SalesforceCRMAnalyticsEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select , update, delete, and insert commands. For example:

SalesforceCRMAnalyticsEntities context = new SalesforceCRMAnalyticsEntities();

var dataset_opportunityQuery = from dataset_opportunity in context.Dataset_Opportunity
  select dataset_opportunity;

foreach (var result in dataset_opportunityQuery) {
  Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.Name);
}

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.