By Mark Carrington, supported by Data8

SQL 4 CDS provides an engine and XrmToolBox tool for using standard SQL syntax to query data stored in CDS / Microsoft Dynamics 365.

It converts the provided SQL query into the corresponding FetchXML syntax and allows the associated query to be executed, including the following types of query:

• SELECT
• INSERT
• UPDATE
• DELETE

The engine converts all the SQL syntax that has a direct equivalent in FetchXML. It will also use some other options to improve the execution of specific queries, including:

• Faster SELECT count(*) FROM entity query execution using RetrieveTotalRecordCountRequest
• Work around AggregateQueryRecordLimit errors by retrieving all the individual records and applying the aggregation in-memory.