Using OAuth to Authenticate your ODBC Connection to Salesforce.com

The Salesforce.com ODBC Driver for Windows now supports the OAuth authentication mechanism.

The OAuth client ID and secret are coded into the driver. When you set up your Easysoft Salesforce ODBC data source, you obtain an OAuth token. You can then use OAuth to authenticate the connection to Salesforce.

The version of the Salesforce.com ODBC Driver that supports OAuth is currently only available from the Easysoft Support Team.

  1. Download the Salesforce ODBC driver.
  2. Install and license the Salesforce.com Driver on the machine where is your ODBC application is installed.

    For installation instructions, see the Salesforce.com ODBC Driver documentation.

Before you can use the Salesforce.com ODBC Driver to connect to Salesforce.com, you need to configure an ODBC data source. An ODBC data source stores the connection details for the target database (e.g. Salesforce.com) and the ODBC driver that is required to connect to it (e.g. the Salesforce.com ODBC driver).

To create a Salesforce.com ODBC Driver data source:

  1. In ODBC Administrator, choose the System DSN tab, and then choose Add.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • If you want to use SQL to work with your Salesforce data, in the Create New Data Source dialog box, choose Easysoft ODBC-Salesforce Driver, and then choose Finish.

      –Or–

    • If you want to use SOQL to work with your Salesforce data, in the Create New Data Source dialog box, choose Easysoft ODBC-Salesforce SOQL Driver, and then choose Finish.
  3. Choose Use OAuth.
  4. If you want to be prompted for an OAuth token each time you connect to Salesforce, skip to step 7. (Note that this OAuth method can't be used with a SQL Server linked server.) Otherwise, choose Authenticate and obtain token.
  5. Login to your Salesforce.com Account when prompted.
  6. Close the browser window.
  7. Use the Test button to verify that you can successfully connect to Salesforce.com.