How to create Salesforce federated tables in MySQL

You can use the SQL Gateway to configure a MySQL remoting service and set up federated tables for Salesforce data. The service is a daemon process that provides a MySQL interface to the CData ODBC Driver for Salesforce: 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 Salesforce data just as you would local MySQL tables.

Getting Started

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Connect to Salesforce 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.

There are several authentication methods available for connecting to Salesforce: OAuth, Login (or basic), and SSO. The Login method requires you to have the username, password, and security token of the user.

OAuth Authentication (default)

The default authentication mechanism (and the one preferred by Salesforce) is OAuth. To use OAuth with CData's embedded OAuth application, leave the connection properties blank. If you have configured your own custom OAuth application with Salesforce (see the Help documentation for more information), set OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL to the properties for you application. Set InitiateOAuth to the desired OAuth flow ("GETANDREFRESH" will have the connector manage the entire OAuth flow).

Login (or Basic) Authentication

If you do not wish do not wish to use OAuth authentication, you can use Login (or basic) authentication. Set AuthScheme to Basic, and set the User, Password, and SecurityToken properties. You can configure your security token in Salesforce.

SSO (single sign-on) Authentication

SSO (single sign-on) can be used by setting the SSOProperties, SSOLoginUrl, and SSOExchangeURL connection properties, which allow you to authenticate to an identity provider. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the Help documentation for more information.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

If your Salesforce org has MFA enforcement enabled, set MFACode to the time-based one-time passcode (TOTP) generated by your authenticator app (such as Salesforce Authenticator or Google Authenticator). MFACode applies to both OAuth and Login authentication flows.

Configure the SQL Gateway

See the SQL Gateway Overview to set up connectivity to Salesforce 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 Salesforce 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 Salesforce. 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 fedSalesforce
FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER mysql
OPTIONS (USER 'sql_gateway_user', PASSWORD 'sql_gateway_passwd', HOST 'sql_gateway_host', PORT ####, DATABASE 'CData Salesforce 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 (Account). Refer to the following template for the statement to create a FEDERATED table:

CREATE TABLE fed_account (
 ...,
 industry TYPE(LEN),
 annualrevenue TYPE(LEN),
 ...,
)
ENGINE=FEDERATED
DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
CONNECTION='fedSalesforce/account';

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 Salesforce 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 Salesforce. Refer to the following example:

SELECT 
 fed_account.industry, 
 local_table.custom_field 
FROM 
 local_table 
JOIN 
 fed_account 
ON 
 local_table.foreign_industry = fed_account.industry;