Use the CData ODBC Driver for Gmail in SAS JMP

You can use the CData ODBC Driver for Gmail to integrate live data into your statistical analysis with SAS JMP. The driver proxies your queries directly to the Gmail API, ensuring that your analysis reflects any changes to the data. The CData ODBC Driver supports the standard SQL used by JMP in the background as you design reports.

The Gmail API supports bidirectional access. This article shows how to access Gmail data into a report and create data visualization. It also shows how to use SQL to query and manipulate Gmail data from the JMP Query Builder.

Access Gmail Data as an ODBC Data Source

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

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.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Import Gmail Data with the Query Builder

After you have created the Gmail DSN, you can use SQL to invoke the capabilities of the Gmail API. Follow the steps below to execute some supported queries in the Query Builder:

1. In SAS JMP, click File -> Database -> Query Builder. The Select Database Connection dialog is displayed.
2. Click New Connection.
3. On the Machine Data Source tab, select the DSN. In the next step, the Select Tables for Query dialog is displayed.
4. In the Available Tables section, select a table and click Primary.
5. As you drag Available Columns to the Included Columns tab, the underlying SQL query is updated.
6. Click Run Query to display the data.
7. To refresh the results with the current data, right-click Update from Database and click Run Script.

Manipulate Gmail Data

You can execute data manipulation queries from JSL scripts such as the one below. To execute a script, click New Script in the toolbar. To connect, specify the DSN. You can then use the standard SQL syntax:

Visualize Gmail Data

After importing, you can use the Graph Builder to create graphs visually. To open the Graph Builder, click the Graph Builder button in the toolbar.

1. Drag a dimension column onto the x axis. For example, Subject.
2. Drag a measure column onto the y axis. For example, Size.
3. Select a chart type. For example, a bar chart.