Read data from QuickBooks Online into SQL Server via ODBC Driver

What is QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit. QuickBooks products are geared mainly toward small and medium-sized businesses and offer on-premises accounting applications as well as cloud-based versions that accept business payments, manage and pay bills, and payroll functions.

Getting Started

In order to start, we will show several examples. ZappySys includes an ODBC JSON / REST API Driver that will help you to call QuickBooks Online API, read various data from QuickBooks Online with ODBC. To learn more about QuickBooks Online API check this help file. To access QuickBooks Online data using REST API call, you need to create an Intuit Developer Account and then create QuickBooks Online App.

Create an Intuit Developer Account

Follow the mentioned steps below to create an Intuit developer account:

1. you can visit this site developer.intuit.com, and click on Sign up from the menu bar.
2. A registration form will be opened in a Popup. you can fill up and then click on Create Account.
   

   Signup Form: Intuit Developer Account

3. Complete the validation check and click Continue.
4. On the confirmation dialog, provide a few details to fill out your profile and click All set.

Once you configured the data source in Gateway, we can now setup Linked Server in SQL Server to query API data.

1. Assuming you have installed SQL Server and SSMS. If not then get both for FREE from here: Get SQL Server Express and  Get SSMS
2. Open SSMS and connect to SQL Server.
3. Go to Root > Server Objects > Linked Servers node. Right click and click New Linked Server...
   

   Add Linked Server in SQL Server

4.  Now enter the linked server name, select Provider as SQL Native Client
5. Enter data source as GatewayServerName, PORT_NUMBER where server name is where ZappySys Gateway is running (Can be same as SQL Server machine or remote machine). Default PORT_NUMBER is 5000 but confirm on Data gateway > General tab in case its different.
6. Enter Catalog Name. This must match name from Data gateway Data sources grid > Name column
   

   Configure Linked Server Provider, Catalog, Server, Port for ZappySys Data Gateway Connection

7. Click on Security Tab and select last option "Be made using this security context". Enter your gateway user account here.

8. Optional: Under the Server Options Tab, Enable RPC and RPC Out and Disable Promotion of Distributed Transactions(MSDTC).

   

   RPC and MSDTC Settings

   ---

   You need to enable RPC Out if you plan to use EXEC(...) AT [MY_LINKED_SERVER_NAME] rather than OPENQUERY.
   If don't enabled it, you will encounter the 'Server "MY_LINKED_SERVER_NAME" is not configured for RPC' error.

   Query Example: EXEC('Select * from Products') AT [MY_LINKED_SERVER_NAME]

   ---

   If you plan to use 'INSERT INTO...EXEC(....) AT [MY_LINKED_SERVER_NAME]' in that case you need to Disable Promotion of Distributed Transactions(MSDTC).
   If don't disabled it, you will encounter the 'The operation could not be performed because OLE DB provider "SQLNCLI11" for linked server "MY_LINKED_SERVER_NAME" was unable to begin a distributed transaction.' error.

   Query Example:

   Insert Into dbo.Products 
   EXEC('Select * from Products') AT [MY_LINKED_SERVER_NAME]

   ---

9. Click OK to save Linked Server
10. In SSMS execute below SQL query to test your connectivity.

    SELECT * FROM OPENQUERY( MY_LINKED_SERVER_NAME, 'SELECT * FROM $')

11. Here is the preview after you run some REST API query in SQL Server. Notice that you can override default configuration by supplying many parameters in WITH clause (second query example in the screenshot).
    

    SSMS Output - Query REST API via Linked Server OPENQUERY statement (Connect to ZappySys Data Gateway)

12. You can wrap your queries inside View or wrap inside Stored procedure to parameterize. Here is an example of creating the view which calls REST API queries.

    CREATE VIEW dbo.vw_MyAPICall_View 
    AS 
    /*Call REST API inside SQL Server View*/
    SELECT * FROM OPENQUERY( MY_LINKED_SERVER_NAME , 'SELECT * FROM $');
    
    GO
    

13. Notice in above approach if you parameterize Stored Procedure then check this article to understand Dynamic Metadata.
14. Now let's insert API data into the new data table "tblMyAPiData" in the SQL server database. For that, we need to execute below SQL query.

    Select * into tblMyAPiData FROM OPENQUERY( MY_LINKED_SERVER_NAME , 'SELECT * FROM $')

    

    Insert data into the new table

15. Let's insert and update records into the already created table "tblMyAPiData"
    • To do that first we need to insert the new API data into the "#temp_tblMyAPiData" temporary database table.
    • Now let's delete the old records from the database table which are updated.
    • At the last insert all new API data into the database table.
    • To do that, we need to query like below SQL queries.

    SELECT * into #temp_tblMyAPiData FROM OPENQUERY(MY_LINKED_SERVER_NAME, 'SELECT * FROM $')
    
    DELETE FROM [dbo].[tblMyAPiData] WHERE id in (SELECT id FROM #temp_tblMyAPiData)
    
    INSERT INTO tblMyAPiData
    SELECT * FROM #temp_tblMyAPiData

     
16. In the upper step, we see how to insert and update new records. Now if you want to update particular fields records only then you need to query like this.

    Update dbtbl_1
    set dbtbl_1.field1 = dbtbl_2.field1,
        dbtbl_1.field2 = dbtbl_2.field2
    FROM tblMyAPiData dbtbl_1
    JOIN (SELECT * FROM OPENQUERY(MY_LINKED_SERVER_NAME, 'SELECT * FROM $')) dbtbl_2 on dbtbl_1.id=dbtbl_2.id

    *NOTE: If you are getting error like : "Cannot resolve the collation conflict between “Latin1_General_CI_AI” and “SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS” in the equal to operation" then you need to query like this :

    Update dbtbl_1
    set dbtbl_1.field1 = dbtbl_2.field1,
        dbtbl_1.field2 = dbtbl_2.field2
    FROM tblMyAPiData dbtbl_1
    JOIN (SELECT * FROM OPENQUERY(MY_LINKED_SERVER_NAME, 'SELECT * FROM $')) dbtbl_2 
    on dbtbl_1.id=dbtbl_2.id 
    COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS