How to create BigCommerce federated tables in MySQL

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

Connect to BigCommerce 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.

BigCommerce authentication is based on the standard OAuth flow. To authenticate, you must initially create an app via the Big Commerce developer platform where you can obtain an OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL. These three parameters will be set as connection properties to your driver.

Additionally, in order to connect to your BigCommerce Store, you will need your StoreId. To find your Store Id please follow these steps:

1. Log in to your BigCommerce account.
2. From the Home Page, select Advanced Settings > API Accounts.
3. Click Create API Account.
4. A text box named API Path will appear on your screen.
5. Inside you can see a URL of the following structure: https://api.bigcommerce.com/stores/{Store Id}/v3.
6. As demonstrated above, your Store Id will be between the 'stores/' and '/v3' path paramters.
7. Once you have retrieved your Store Id you can either click Cancel or proceed in creating an API Account in case you do not have one already.

Configure the SQL Gateway

See the SQL Gateway Overview to set up connectivity to BigCommerce 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 BigCommerce 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 BigCommerce. 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 fedBigCommerce
FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER mysql
OPTIONS (USER 'sql_gateway_user', PASSWORD 'sql_gateway_passwd', HOST 'sql_gateway_host', PORT ####, DATABASE 'CData BigCommerce 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 (Customers). Refer to the following template for the statement to create a FEDERATED table:

CREATE TABLE fed_customers (
  ...,
  firstname  TYPE(LEN),
  lastname  TYPE(LEN),
  ...,
)
ENGINE=FEDERATED
DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
CONNECTION='fedBigCommerce/customers';

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 BigCommerce 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 BigCommerce. Refer to the following example:

SELECT 
  fed_customers.firstname, 
  local_table.custom_field 
FROM 
  local_table 
JOIN 
  fed_customers 
ON 
  local_table.foreign_firstname = fed_customers.firstname;