Connect to Gmail Data in DBArtisan

The CData ODBC Driver for Gmail seamlessly integrates Gmail data into database management tools like DBArtisan by enabling you to access Gmail data as a database. This article shows how to create an data source for Gmail in DBArtisan and execute queries. You can then edit data visually and execute standard SQL.

Integrate Gmail Data into DBArtisan Projects

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

There are two ways to authenticate to Gmail. Before selecting one, first ensure that you have enabled IMAP access in your Gmail account settings. See the "Connecting to Gmail" section under "Getting Started" in the installed documentation for a guide.

The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, can be set to valid Gmail user credentials.

Alternatively, instead of providing the Password, you can use the OAuth authentication standard. To access Google APIs on behalf on individual users, you can use the embedded credentials or you can register your own OAuth app.

OAuth also enables you to use a service account to connect on behalf of users in a Google Apps domain. To authenticate with a service account, you will need to register an application to obtain the OAuth JWT values.

In addition to the OAuth values, you will need to provide the User. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

You can then follow the steps below to register Gmail data as a database instance in your project:

1. In DBArtisan, click Data Source -> Register Datasource.
2. Select Generic ODBC.
3. Enter a name for the data source and select the DSN.
4. Finish the wizard to connect to Gmail data. Gmail entities are displayed in the Datasource Explorer.

You can now work with Gmail data as you work with any other database. See the driver help documentation for more information on the queries supported by the Gmail API.