Linux DSN Configuration
This section describes how to set up ODBC connectivity and configure DSNs on several Linux distributions: Debian-based systems, like Ubuntu, and Red Hat Linux platforms, like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, and Fedora.
Minimum Linux Versions
Here are the minimum supported versions for Red Hat-based and Debian-based systems:
| OS | Min. Version |
| Ubuntu | 11.04 |
| Debian | 7 |
| RHEL | 6.9 |
| CentOS | 6.9 |
| Fedora | 13 |
| SUSE | 12.1 |
Installing the Driver Dependencies
Run the following commands as root or with sudo to install the necessary dependencies:
- Debian/Ubuntu:
apt-get install libc6 libstdc++6 zlib1g libgcc1
- RHEL/CentOS/Fedora:
yum install glibc libstdc++ zlib libgcc
Here are the corresponding libraries required by the driver:
| Debian/Ubuntu Package | RHEL/CentOS/Fedora Package | File |
| libc6 | glibc | linux-vdso.1 |
| libc6 | glibc | libm.so.6 |
| libc6 | glibc | librt.so.1 |
| libc6 | glibc | libdl.so.2 |
| libc6 | glibc | libpthread.so.0 |
| libc6 | glibc | libc.so.6 |
| libc6 | glibc | ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 |
| libstdc++6 | libstdc++ | libstdc++.so.6 |
| zlib1g | zlib | libz.so.1 |
| libgcc1 | libgcc | libgcc_s.so.1 |
Installing the Driver
You can use standard package management systems to install the driver.
On Debian-based systems, like Ubuntu, run the following command with root or sudo:
dpkg -i /path/to/driver/setup/SAPSuccessFactorsODBCDriverforUnix.deb
On systems that support the RPM package format, run the following command with root or sudo:
rpm -ivh /path/to/driver/SAPSuccessFactorsODBCDriverforUnix.rpm
Licensing the Driver
Run the following commands to license the driver. To activate a trial, omit the <key> input.
cd /opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-sapsuccessfactors/bin/
sudo ./install-license.x64 <key>
Connecting through the Driver Manager
The driver manager loads the driver and passes function calls from the application to the driver. You need to register the driver with the driver manager and you define DSNs in the driver manager's configuration files.
The driver installation registers the driver with the unixODBC driver manager and creates a system DSN. The unixODBC driver manager can be used from Python and from many other applications. Your application may embed another driver manager.
Creating the DSN
See Using unixODBC to install unixODBC and configure DSNs. See Using the DataDirect Driver Manager to create a DSN to connect to OBIEE, Informatica, and SAS.
The CData ODBC Driver for SAP SuccessFactors communicates to SAP SuccessFactors over the OData API. By default, it is enabled. However, if you need to provide additional permissions, please follow the steps from SAP laid out in their support here.
Connecting to SAPSuccessFactors
You can authenticate to SAP SuccessFactors using Basic authentication or OAuth with SAML assertion.
Basic Authentication
You must provide values for the following properties to successfully authenticate to SAP SuccessFactors. Note that the provider will reuse the session opened by SAP SuccessFactors using cookies. Which means that your credentials will be used only on the first request to open the session. After that, cookies returned from SAP SuccessFactors will be used for authentication.- Url, set this to the url of the server hosting Success Factors. Some of the servers are listed here.
- User, set this to the username of your account.
- Password, set this to the password of your account.
- CompanyId, set this to the unique identifier of your company.
OAuth Authentication
You must provide values for the following properties, which will be used to get the access token.
- OAuthGrantType, set this to CLIENT if you are working with an LMS (Learning Micro Services) in order to authenticate to the service. For all the other OData services use SAML. Default value for this property is SAML. Note that this property is only available for OAuth authentication.
- Url, set this to the url of the server hosting Success Factors. Some of the servers are listed here. In case of connecting to a LMS (Learning Micro Service) the full URL should be specified including the service name.
- User, set this to the username of your account.
- CompanyId, set this to the unique identifier of your company.
- OAuthClientId, set this to the API Key that was generated in API Center.
- OAuthClientSecret, the X.509 private key used to sign SAML assertion. The private key can be found in the certificate you downloaded in Registering your OAuth Client Application.
- InitiateOAuth, set this to GETANDREFRESH.
Refreshing OAuth Values
The driver can refresh the temporary OAuth access tokens obtained during the browser-based OAuth authentication exchange. By default, the driver saves the encrypted tokens in the odbc.ini file corresponding to the DSN. Access to this odbc.ini file can be restricted in the case of System DSNs.
To enable the automatic token exchange, you can give the driver write access to the system odbc.ini. Or, you can set the OAuthSettingsLocation connection property to an alternate file path, to which the driver would have read and write access.
OAuthSettingsLocation=/tmp/oauthsettings.txt
Installing Dependencies for OAuth Authentication
The OAuth authentication standard requires the authenticating user to interact with SAP SuccessFactors, using a web-browser. If the first OAuth interaction is to be done on the same machine the driver is installed on, for example, a desktop application, the driver needs access to the xdg-open program, which opens the default browser.
To satisfy this dependency, install the corresponding package with your package manager:
| Debian/Ubuntu Package | RHEL/CentOS/Fedora Package | File |
| xdg-utils | xdg-utils | xdg-open |
Set the Driver Encoding
The ODBC drivers need to specify which encoding to use with the ODBC Driver Manager. By default, the CData ODBC Drivers for Unix are configured to use UTF-16 which is compatible with unixODBC, but other Driver Managers may require alternative encoding.
Alternatively, if you are using the ODBC driver from an application that uses the ANSI ODBC API it may be necessary to set the ANSI code page. For example, to import Japanese characters in an ANSI application, you can specify the code page in the config file '/opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-sapsuccessfactors/lib/cdata.odbc.sapsuccessfactors.ini':
[Driver]
AnsiCodePage = 932