How to create Okta federated tables in MySQL

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

Connect to Okta 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.

To connect to Okta, set the Domain connection string property to your Okta domain.

You will use OAuth to authenticate with Okta, so you need to create a custom OAuth application.

Creating a Custom OAuth Application

From your Okta account:

1. Sign in to your Okta developer edition organization with your administrator account.
2. In the Admin Console, go to Applications > Applications.
3. Click Create App Integration.
4. For the Sign-in method, select OIDC - OpenID Connect.
5. For Application type, choose Web Application.
6. Enter a name for your custom application.
7. Set the Grant Type to Authorization Code. If you want the token to be automatically refreshed, also check Refresh Token.
8. Set the callback URL:
   • For desktop applications and headless machines, use http://localhost:33333 or another port number of your choice. The URI you set here becomes the CallbackURL property.
   • For web applications, set the callback URL to a trusted redirect URL. This URL is the web location the user returns to with the token that verifies that your application has been granted access.
9. In the Assignments section, either select Limit access to selected groups and add a group, or skip group assignment for now.
10. Save the OAuth application.
11. The application's Client Id and Client Secret are displayed on the application's General tab. Record these for future use. You will use the Client Id to set the OAuthClientId and the Client Secret to set the OAuthClientSecret.
12. Check the Assignments tab to confirm that all users who must access the application are assigned to the application.
13. On the Okta API Scopes tab, select the scopes you wish to grant to the OAuth application. These scopes determine the data that the app has permission to read, so a scope for a particular view must be granted for the driver to have permission to query that view. To confirm the scopes required for each view, see the view-specific pages in Data Model < Views in the Help documentation.

Configure the SQL Gateway

See the SQL Gateway Overview to set up connectivity to Okta 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.

Create a FEDERATED Server and Tables for Okta 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 Okta. 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 fedOkta
FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER mysql
OPTIONS (USER 'sql_gateway_user', PASSWORD 'sql_gateway_passwd', HOST 'sql_gateway_host', PORT ####, DATABASE 'CData Okta 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 (Users). Refer to the following template for the statement to create a FEDERATED table:

CREATE TABLE fed_users (
  ...,
  id  TYPE(LEN),
  profilefirstname  TYPE(LEN),
  ...,
)
ENGINE=FEDERATED
DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
CONNECTION='fedOkta/users';

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 Okta 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 Okta. Refer to the following example:

SELECT 
  fed_users.id, 
  local_table.custom_field 
FROM 
  local_table 
JOIN 
  fed_users 
ON 
  local_table.foreign_id = fed_users.id;