Connecting to Gmail

Deploying the Driver

Prerequisite: The install file (setup.jar) is a Java Application that requires Java 6 (J2SE) or above to run.
To install the driver, double-click the setup.jar file and proceed with the instructions in the installation wizard.
Depending on the machine on which you are accessing the Sisense application, install the driver in one of the following locations:

• When Sisense is installed on your local machine , deploy the driver locally.

• For a non-local installation (when accessing Sisense on a remote Windows server, or accessing the Sisense hosted cloud environment), select one of the below methods:

  • Deploy the driver on the Sisense server machine, and then perform all the authentication on the server machine. OR
  • Deploy the driver on your local machine (or any other machine, as convenient), perform all the authentication on that machine, and then copy the JAR file to the remote server.

For a short video of the process, see below (the video uses the Box driver as an example).

JAVA Troubleshooting

If you do not have Java 6 installed, you may download it from here .

If your system is not set up to run Java applications, execute the following command: java -jar setup.jar .

Connecting to Gmail

The driver communicates with Gmail through the IMAP protocol. IMAP enables all your client devices to work with the same remote data, instead of individual copies. To connect to Gmail, you will first need to enable client access to Gmail over IMAP.

Then, to access Gmail from Sisense , you create the connection string and provide Sisense with it to connect to your data.

Enabling IMAP

Follow the steps below to enable access to Gmail over IMAP:

1. Open the Gmail Web interface and click , then select the Settings option.
2. On the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab, select Enable IMAP .
3. Save your changes.

To create the connection string:

1. Open the lib directory for the connector. This is the default path: C:\Program Files\CData\CData JDBC Driver for <Driver Name> 2019\lib .

2. Double-click the jar file in the lib directory.

   

   Alternatively, to open the jar file from the command line, enter the following command in the command prompt (change the driver name to your driver): cd C:\Program Files\CData\CData JDBC Driver for <Driver Name> 2019\lib . Press Enter and then enter the following command (change the driver name to your driver): “C:\Program Files\Sisense\infra\jre\bin\java.exe" -jar cdata.jdbc.<Driver Name>.jar . Press Enter again.
   For example:
   
   The Connection String Builder opens.

3. Click in the Value column of the User property and set this to the user of the Gmail account.

4. Click in the Value column of the Initiate OAuth property and select GETANDREFRESH .

   

5. Click Test Connection .

6. A browser window opens where you need to log in to your application in order to grant access. (Each application will display a different window and messages.)
   Close the Authorization Successful! message that opens.

7. Go back to the Connection String Builder dialog and click OK in the Test Connection Successful message to close it.

8. Click Copy to Clipboard to obtain the connection string.

For a short video of the process, see below (the video uses the XML driver as an example):

The driver uses embedded credentials that originate from a OAuth App embedded into the driver. The embedded credentials provide full functionality, so you do not have to create an OAuth App.

You need to follow the above instructions only once, to retrieve the Access and Refresh tokens. Once the tokens have been retrieved, the driver will be refreshing them in the background when they expire, with no further involvement from you.

Adding Gmail Tables to your ElastiCube

1. Open Sisense.

   For a non-local installation, open Sisense on the hosted cloud environment.

2. In the Data page, open an ElastiCube or create a new ElastiCube .

3. In the Model Editor, click . The Add Data dialog box is displayed.

   

4. Click Generic JDBC to open the JDBC settings.

   

5. In Connection String , paste the string you obtained above. When you do so, the string is appended with some _persist properties. The following is an example of the connection string as it looks in Sisense:
   jdbc:box:Initiate OAuth="GETANDREFRESH";_persist_oauthexpiresin=3199;_persist_token_

6. In JDBC JARs Folder , enter the name of the directory where the Gmail JAR file is located.

7. In Driver's Class Name , enter the following class name: cdata.jdbc.gmail.GmailDriver .

8. Leave the User Name and Password blank.

9. Click Next . A list of tables in the database are displayed. All tables and views associated with the database will appear in a new window.

10. From the Tables list, select the relevant table or view you want to work with. You can click next to the relevant table or click Preview to see a preview of the data inside it.

11. (Optional) Click + to customize the data you want to import with SQL. See Importing Data with Custom Queries for more information.

12. After you have selected all the relevant tables, click Done . The tables are added to your data model.

For a short video of the process, see below (the video uses the XML driver as an example):

Additional Resources

For the full documentation set for the Gmail connector, click here .

For connection string options, click here .

For information on the Gmail data model, click here.

Limitations

• The default Gmail table names contain a backslash; some also contain spaces. You can use square brackets to escape the table names for the default Gmail folders.

  For example: SELECT * FROM [Gmail/All Mail]

• Aggregate functions not supported.

• Default message limit is 100 and does not include message content. To increase message limit, set the connection property Max Items to -1 (this will return all mail within a mailbox), or use Limit in custom query (e,g., SELECT * FROM Inbox LIMIT 9999). To include the messages, set the connection property Include Message to True.

Troubleshooting

After clicking Test Connection in the Connection String Builder , you may receive a message saying that test connection failed due to an IMAP protocol error.

In this case, open the Inbox in your Gmail account. You will find a Critical Security Alert email there. Open the email and follow the instructions inside to enable the driver access to less secure apps. Once enabled, go to the Connection String Builder and click Test Connection again. You will now get a Connection Successful message.