Analyze Sage 300 Data in Infragistics Reveal

Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData API Server and Sage 300 ADO.NET Provider to build dynamic dashboards from live Sage 300 data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for Sage 300, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to Sage 300 in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

Connect to Sage 300 from API Server

CData API Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

1. Open API Server and click Settings -> Connection -> Add Connection
2. Select "Sage 300"
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Sage 300.

   Sage 300 requires some initial setup in order to communicate over the Sage 300 Web API.

   • Set up the security groups for the Sage 300 user. Give the Sage 300 user access to the option under Security Groups (per each module required).
   • Edit both web.config files in the /Online/Web and /Online/WebApi folders; change the key AllowWebApiAccessForAdmin to true. Restart the webAPI app-pool for the settings to take.
   • Once the user access is configured, click https://server/Sage300WebApi/ to ensure access to the web API.

   Authenticate to Sage 300 using Basic authentication.

   Connect Using Basic Authentication

   You must provide values for the following properties to successfully authenticate to Sage 300. Note that the provider reuses the session opened by Sage 300 using cookies. This means that your credentials are used only on the first request to open the session. After that, cookies returned from Sage 300 are used for authentication.

   • Url: Set this to the url of the server hosting Sage 300. Construct a URL for the Sage 300 Web API as follows: {protocol}://{host-application-path}/v{version}/{tenant}/ For example, http://localhost/Sage300WebApi/v1.0/-/.
   • User: Set this to the username of your account.
   • Password: Set this to the password of your account.
   

Add Sage 300 Resource Definitions in API Server

After connecting to Sage 300, create Resources, which represent API endpoints for Sage 300 data.

1. Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource
2. Select the Sage 300 connection
3. Select the table you wish to retrieve and click Next
4. (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
5. Save the settings

Add an API Server User

Create a User to connect to Sage 300 from Reveal through API Server.

1. Click Settings -> Users
2. Click Add
3. Configure a User with access to the Sage 300 Connection and Resource(s)

(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

When accessing and connecting to multiple different domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in Settings -> Server.

• Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
• Allow all domains without '*': ON
• Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
• Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization

Save the changes to the settings.

Create a Dashboard in Reveal

With the API Server configured, we can visualize Sage 300 data in Reveal.

1. Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New
2. Click Data Source -> OData Feed
3. Specify the API Server API endpoint URL, for example: https://serverurl/api.rsc
4. Select Generic Credentials and specify the API Server username and authentication token
5. Select the entity you wish to visualize
6. Select fields and choose a chart type

More Information & Free Trial

At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live Sage 300 data. For more information on creating OData feeds from Sage 300 (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live Sage 300 data in tools that consume OData APIs.