Connect to Gmail Data in as an External Source in Dremio

The CData JDBC Driver for Gmail implements JDBC Standards and allows various applications, including Dremio, to work with live Gmail data. Dremio is a data lakehouse platform designed to empower self-service, interactive analytics on the data lake. With the CData JDBC Driver, you can include live Gmail data as a part of your enterprise data lake. This article describes how to connect to Gmail data from Dremio as an External Source.

The CData JDBC Driver enables high-speed access to live Gmail data in Dremio. Once you install the driver, authenticate with Gmail and gain immediate access to Gmail data within your data lake. By surfacing Gmail data using native data types and handling complex filters, aggregations, & other operations automatically, the CData JDBC Driver grants seamless access to Gmail data.

Build the ARP Connector

To use the CData JDBC Driver in Dremio, you need to build an Advanced Relation Pushdown (ARP) Connector. You can view the source code for the Connector on GitHub or download the ZIP file (GitHub.com) directly. Once you copy or extract the files, run the following command from the root directory of the connector (the directory containing the pom.xml file) to build the connector.

mvn clean install

Once the JAR file for the connector is built (in the target directory), you are ready to copy the ARP connector and JDBC Driver to your Dremio instance.

Installing the Connector and JDBC Driver

Install the ARP Connector to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/ and the JDBC Driver for Gmail to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/3rdparty. You can use commands similar to the following:

ARP Connector

docker cp PATH\TO\dremio-gmail-plugin-20.0.0.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/

JDBC Driver for Gmail

docker cp PATH\TO\cdata.jdbc.gmail.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/3rdparty/

Connecting to Gmail

Gmail will now appear as an External Source option in Dremio. The ARP Connector built uses a JDBC URL to connect to Gmail data. The JDBC Driver has a built-in connection string designer that you can use (see below).

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Gmail JDBC Driver. Double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.gmail.jar

Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

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.

NOTE: To use the JDBC Driver in Dremio, you will need a license (full or trial) and a Runtime Key (RTK). For more information on obtaining this license (or a trial), contact our sales team.

Add the Runtime Key (RTK) to the JDBC URL. You will end up with a JDBC URL similar to the following:

jdbc:gmail:RTK=5246...;User=username;Password=password;

Access Gmail as an External Source

To add Gmail as an External Source, click to add a new source and select Gmail. Copy the JDBC URL and paste it into the New Gmail Source wizard.

Save the connection and you are ready to query live Gmail data in Dremio, easily incorporating Gmail data into your data lake.

More Information & Free Trial

Using the CData JDBC Driver for Gmail in Dremio, you can incorporate live Gmail data into your data lake. Check out our CData JDBC Driver for Gmail page for more information about connecting to Gmail. Download a free, 30 day trial of the CData JDBC Driver for Gmail and get started today.