How to create Harvest federated tables in MySQL

You can use the SQL Gateway to configure a MySQL remoting service and set up federated tables for Harvest data. The service is a daemon process that provides a MySQL interface to the CData ODBC Driver for Harvest: After you have started the service, you can create a server and tables using the FEDERATED Storage Engine in MySQL. You can then work with Harvest data just as you would local MySQL tables.

Connect to Harvest Data

If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can use the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to configure the DSN. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.

Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Harvest Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Harvest.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Harvest (see below).

Harvest API Profile Settings

To authenticate to Harvest, you can use either Token authentication or the OAuth standard. Use Basic authentication to connect to your own data. Use OAuth to allow other users to connect to their data.

Using Token Authentication

To use Token Authentication, set the APIKey to your Harvest Personal Access Token in the ProfileSettings connection property. In addition to APIKey, set your AccountId in ProfileSettings to connect.

Using OAuth Authentication

First, register an OAuth2 application with Harvest. The application can be created from the "Developers" section of Harvest ID.

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

• ProfileSettings: Set your AccountId in ProfileSettings.
• AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
• OAuthClientId: Set this to the client ID that you specified in your app settings.
• OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the client secret that you specified in your app settings.
• CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI that you specified in your app settings.
• InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to manage how the driver obtains and refreshes the OAuthAccessToken.

Configure the SQL Gateway

See the SQL Gateway Overview to set up connectivity to Harvest data as a virtual MySQL database. You will configure a MySQL remoting service that listens for MySQL requests from clients. The service can be configured in the SQL Gateway UI.

👁 Creating a MySQL Remoting Service in SQL Gateway (Salesforce is shown)

Create a FEDERATED Server and Tables for Harvest Data

After you have configured and started the service, create a FEDERATED server to simplify the process of creating FEDERATED tables:

Create a FEDERATED Server

The following statement will create a FEDERATED server based on the ODBC Driver for Harvest. Note that the username and password of the FEDERATED server must match a user account you defined on the Users tab of the SQL Gateway.

CREATE SERVER fedAPI
FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER mysql
OPTIONS (USER 'sql_gateway_user', PASSWORD 'sql_gateway_passwd', HOST 'sql_gateway_host', PORT ####, DATABASE 'CData API Sys');

Create a FEDERATED Table

To create a FEDERATED table using our newly created server, use the CONNECTION keyword and pass the name of the FEDERATED server and the remote table (Invoices). Refer to the following template for the statement to create a FEDERATED table:

CREATE TABLE fed_invoices (
 ...,
 id TYPE(LEN),
 clientname TYPE(LEN),
 ...,
)
ENGINE=FEDERATED
DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
CONNECTION='fedAPI/invoices';

NOTE: The table schema for the FEDERATED table must match the remote table schema exactly. You can always connect directly to the MySQL remoting service using any MySQL client and run a SHOW CREATE TABLE query to get the table schema.

Execute Queries

You can now execute queries to the Harvest FEDERATED tables from any tool that can connect to MySQL, which is particularly useful if you need to JOIN data from a local table with data from Harvest. Refer to the following example:

SELECT 
 fed_invoices.id, 
 local_table.custom_field 
FROM 
 local_table 
JOIN 
 fed_invoices 
ON 
 local_table.foreign_id = fed_invoices.id;