PowerShell Scripting to Replicate Email Data to MySQL

The CData Cmdlets for Email offer live access to Email data from within PowerShell. Using PowerShell scripts, you can easily automate regular tasks like data replication. This article will walk through using the CData Cmdlets for Email and the CData Cmdlets for MySQL in PowerShell to replicate Email data to a MySQL database.

After obtaining the needed connection properties, accessing Email data in PowerShell and preparing for replication consists of four basic steps.

The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid credentials. The Server must be specified to retrieve emails and the SMTPServer must be specified to send emails.

Collecting Email Data

1. Install the module:

   Install-Module EmailCmdlets

2. Connect to Email:

   $email = Connect-Email -User $User -Password $Password -Server $Server -Port $Port -SMTP Server $SMTP Server -SMTP Port $SMTP Port -SSL Mode $SSL Mode -Protocol $Protocol -Mailbox $Mailbox

3. Retrieve the data from a specific resource:

   $data = Select-Email -Connection $email -Table "Mailboxes"

   You can also use the Invoke-Email cmdlet to execute pure SQL-92 statements:

   $data = Invoke-Email -Connection $email -Query 'SELECT * FROM Mailboxes WHERE Mailbox = @Mailbox' -Params @{'@Mailbox'='Spam'}

4. Save a list of the column names from the returned data.

   $columns = ($data | Get-Member -MemberType NoteProperty | Select-Object -Property Name).Name

Inserting Email Data into the MySQL Database

With the data and column names collected, you are ready to replicate the data into a MySQL database.

1. Install the module:

   Install-Module MySQLCmdlets

2. Connect to MySQL, using the server address and port of the MySQL server, valid user credentials, and a specific database with the table in which the data will be replicated:

   $mysql = Connect-MySQL -User $User -Password $Password -Database $Database -Server $Server -Port $Port

3. Loop through the Email data, store the values, and use the Add-MySQL cmdlet to insert the data into the MySQL database, one row at a time. In this example, the table will need to have the same name as the Email resource (Mailboxes) and to exist in the database.

   $data | % { $row = $_ $values = @() $columns | % { $col = $_ $values += $row.$($col) } Add-MySQL -Connection $mysql -Table "Mailboxes" -Columns $columns -Values $values }

You have now replicated your Email data to a MySQL database. This gives you freedom to work with Email data in the same way that you work with other MySQL tables, whether that is performing analytics, building reports, or other business functions.

Notes

• Once you have connected to Email and MySQL in PowerShell, you can pipe command results to perform the replication in a single line:

  Select-Email -Connection $email -Table "Mailboxes" | % { $row = $_ $values = @() $columns | % { $col = $_ $values += $row.$($col) } Add-MySQL -Connection $mysql -Table "Mailboxes" -Columns $columns -Values $values }

• If you wish to replicate the Email data to another database using another PowerShell module, you will want to exclude the Columns, Connection, and Table columns from the data returned by the Select-Email cmdlet since those columns are used to help pipe data from one CData cmdlet to another:

  $columns = ($data | Get-Member -MemberType NoteProperty | Select-Object -Property Name).Name | ? {$_ -NotIn @('Columns','Connection','Table')}