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) and Fedora.

Minimum Linux Versions

Here are the minimum supported versions for Red Hat-based and Debian-based systems:


OS	Min. Version
Ubuntu	18.04
Debian	10
RHEL	8
Fedora	28
SUSE	15

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/Fedora:
```
yum install glibc libstdc++ zlib libgcc
```

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/CDSODBCDriverforUnix.deb

On systems that support the RPM package format, run the following command with root or sudo:

rpm -ivh /path/to/driver/CDSODBCDriverforUnix.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-cds/bin/
sudo ./install-license.sh <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.

Schema

Microsoft Dataverse supports schema values of 'System' and 'Entities' and can be set using the Schema property.

Using 'System' for Schema property uses the Web API to query entities/tables.

Using 'Entities' for Schema property uses the EntityDefinitions entity set path and retrieves information about EntityMetadata EntityType entities/tables. This will often result in more user friendly names, though requires extra metadata requests.

Connecting to Microsoft Dataverse

To authenticate to the Microsoft Dataverse source, you should first set the OrganizationUrl to the URL of the organization you are connecting to, such as https://[organization].crm.dynamics.com.

Azure AD

Azure AD is a connection type that leverages OAuth to authenticate. OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with Microsoft Dataverse using an internet browser. The driver facilitates this in several ways as described below. Set your AuthScheme to AzureAD. The rest of the AzureAD flows assume that you have done so.

Desktop Applications

CData provides an embedded OAuth application that simplifies OAuth desktop Authentication. Alternatively, you can create a custom OAuth application. See Creating an Azure AD Application for information about creating custom applications and reasons for doing so.

For authentication, the only difference between the two methods is that you must set two additional connection properties when using custom OAuth applications.

After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

OAuthClientId: (custom applications only) Set this to the client Id in your application settings.
OAuthClientSecret: (custom applications only) Set this to the client secret in your application settings.
CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URL in your application settings.

When you connect the driver opens the OAuth endpoint in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions to the application.

Headless Machines

To configure the driver to use OAuth with a user account on a headless machine, you need to authenticate on another device that has an internet browser.

Choose one of these two options:
- Option 1: Obtain the OAuthVerifier value as described in "Obtain and Exchange a Verifier Code" below.
- Option 2: Install the driver on another machine and transfer the OAuth authentication values after you authenticate through the usual browser-based flow, as described in "Transfer OAuth Settings" below.
Then configure the driver to automatically refresh the access token from the headless machine.

Option 1: Obtain and Exchange a Verifier Code

To obtain a verifier code, you must authenticate at the OAuth authorization URL.

Follow the steps below to authenticate from the machine with an internet browser and obtain the OAuthVerifier connection property.

Choose one of these options:
- If you are using the Embedded OAuth Application click Microsoft Dataverse OAuth endpoint to open the endpoint in your browser.
- If you are using a custom OAuth application, create the Authorization URL by setting the following properties:
  - InitiateOAuth: Set to OFF.
  - OAuthClientId: Set to the client Id assigned when you registered your application.
  - OAuthClientSecret: Set to the client secret assigned when you registered your application.
  Then call the GetOAuthAuthorizationUrl stored procedure with the appropriate CallbackURL. Open the URL returned by the stored procedure in a browser.
Log in and grant permissions to the driver. You are then redirected to the callback URL, which contains the verifier code.
Save the value of the verifier code. Later you will set this in the OAuthVerifier connection property.

Next, you need to exchange the OAuth verifier code for OAuth refresh and access tokens. Set the following properties:

On the headless machine, set the following connection properties to obtain the OAuth authentication values:

InitiateOAuth: Set this to REFRESH.
OAuthVerifier: Set this to the verifier code.
OAuthClientId: (custom applications only) Set this to the client Id in your custom OAuth application settings.
OAuthClientSecret: (custom applications only) Set this to the client secret in the custom OAuth application settings.
OAuthSettingsLocation: Set this to the location of the file where the driver saves the OAuth token values that persist across connections.

After the OAuth settings file is generated, you need to re-set the following properties to connect:

InitiateOAuth: Set this to REFRESH.
OAuthClientId: (custom applications only) Set this to the client Id assigned when you registered your application.
OAuthClientSecret: (custom applications only) Set this to the client secret assigned when you registered your application.
OAuthSettingsLocation: Set this to the location containing the encrypted OAuth authentication values. Make sure this location grants read and write permissions to the driver to enable the automatic refreshing of the access token.

Option 2: Transfer OAuth Settings

Prior to connecting on a headless machine, you need to create and install a connection with the driver on a device that supports an internet browser. Set the connection properties as described in "Desktop Applications" above.

After completing the instructions in "Desktop Applications", the resulting authentication values are encrypted and written to the location specified by OAuthSettingsLocation. The default filename is OAuthSettings.txt.

Once you have successfully tested the connection, copy the OAuth settings file to your headless machine.

On the headless machine, set the following connection properties to connect to data:

InitiateOAuth: Set this to REFRESH.
OAuthClientId: (custom applications only) Set this to the client Id assigned when you registered your application.
OAuthClientSecret: (custom applications only) Set this to the client secret assigned when you registered your application.
OAuthSettingsLocation: Set this to the location of your OAuth settings file. Make sure this location gives read and write permissions to the driver to enable the automatic refreshing of the access token.

Client Credentials

Client credentials refers to a flow in OAuth where there is no direct user authentication taking place. Instead, credentials are created for just the app itself. All tasks taken by the app are done without a default user context. This makes the authentication flow a bit different from standard.

Client OAuth Flow

All permissions related to the client oauth flow require admin consent. This means the app embedded with the CData ODBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse cannot be used in the client oauth flow. You must create your own OAuth app in order to use client credentials. See Creating an Azure AD Application for more details.

In your App Registration in portal.azure.com, navigate to API Permissions and select the Microsoft Graph permissions. There are two distinct sets of permissions - Delegated and Application permissions. The permissions used during client credential authentication are under Application Permissions. Select the applicable permissions you require for your integration.

You are ready to connect after setting one of the below connection properties groups depending on the authentication type.

Client Secret
- InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can cuse InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
- AzureTenant: Set this to the tenant you wish to connet to.
- OAuthGrantType: Set this to CLIENT.
- OAuthClientId: Set this to the Client Id in your app settings.
- OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the Client Secret in your app settings.
Certificate
- InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
- AzureTenant: Set this to the tenant you wish to connect to.
- OAuthGrantType: Set this to CLIENT.
- OAuthClientId: Set this to the Client Id in your app settings.
- OAuthJWTCert: Set this to the JWT Certificate store.
- OAuthJWTCertType: Set this to the type of the certificate store specified by OAuthJWTCert.

Authentication with client credentials will take place automatically like any other connection, except there will be no window opened prompting the user. Because there is no user context, there is no need for a browser popup. Connections will take place and be handled internally.

Azure Service Principal

Azure Service Principal is role-based application-based authentication. This means that authentication is done per application, rather than per user. All tasks taken on by the application are executed without a default user context, but based on the assigned roles. The application access to the resources is controlled through the assigned roles' permissions.

For information about how to set up Azure Service Principal authentication, see Creating an Azure AD Application with Service Principal.

Managed Service Identity (MSI)

If you are running Microsoft Dataverse on an Azure VM and want to leverage MSI to connect, set AuthScheme to AzureMSI.

User-Managed Identities

To obtain a token for a managed identity, use the OAuthClientId property to specify the managed identity's "client_id".

When your VM has multiple user-assigned managed identities, you must also specify OAuthClientId.

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 Microsoft Dataverse, 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/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-cds/lib/cdata.odbc.cds.ini':

[Driver]
AnsiCodePage = 932