How to Connect to Live SQL Analysis Services Data in Mistral AI Workflows and Agents (via CData Connect AI)

Mistral AI is a frontier AI company that builds enterprise-grade open-source and commercial large language models (LLMs). With Mistral, you can train, fine-tune, and deploy agents anywhere – on premises, in the cloud, or at the edge – while retaining full control of your data. Its agent-ready platform enables multilingual and multimodal AI that can search, create, code, automate, and collaborate securely, with support for memory and extended context handling.

CData Connect AI provides a secure cloud-to-cloud interface for easily integrating hundreds of enterprise data sources with Mistral AI. Through CData Connect AI, Mistral AI agents can query, analyze, and act on live SQL Analysis Services data in real time, without replication. Connect AI manages authentication, security, and query optimization so you can focus on building intelligent workflows, while Mistral handles reasoning and natural language interaction.

In this guide, we will use Mistral AI's Le Chat, Mistral's customizable conversational chatbot, along with CData Connect AI to connect to live SQL Analysis Services data. You will be able to interact with your live SQL Analysis Services data directly in Mistral AI workflows – running queries and automating tasks securely.

The setup takes just a few minutes, and once connected, you will have your own chatbot agent intelligently conversing with your live SQL Analysis Services data.

Let's begin.

Prerequisites

1. A Mistral AI account – Sign up or log in here.
2. A CData Connect AI account – Sign up or log in here.
3. An active SQL Analysis Services account with valid credentials.

Overview

Here is a quick overview of the steps we will follow:

1. Connect: Add a connection to SQL Analysis Services in CData Connect AI using your credentials.
2. Configure: Create a custom MCP connection in Mistral AI Le Chat that points to your SQL Analysis Services connection in CData Connect AI.
3. Query: Interact with live SQL Analysis Services data in Mistral AI workflows – running queries and taking actions using natural language.

Step 1: Configure SQL Analysis Services Connectivity for Mistral

Connectivity to SQL Analysis Services from Mistral AI is made possible through CData Connect AI Remote MCP. To interact with SQL Analysis Services data from Mistral, we start by creating and configuring a SQL Analysis Services connection in CData Connect AI.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection.

2. Select "SQL Analysis Services" from the Add Connection panel.

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to SQL Analysis Services.

   To connect, provide authentication and set the Url property to a valid SQL Server Analysis Services endpoint. You can connect to SQL Server Analysis Services instances hosted over HTTP with XMLA access. See the Microsoft documentation to configure HTTP access to SQL Server Analysis Services.

   To secure connections and authenticate, set the corresponding connection properties, below. The data provider supports the major authentication schemes, including HTTP and Windows, as well as SSL/TLS.

   • HTTP Authentication

     Set AuthScheme to "Basic" or "Digest" and set User and Password. Specify other authentication values in CustomHeaders.

   • Windows (NTLM)

     Set the Windows User and Password and set AuthScheme to "NTLM".

   • Kerberos and Kerberos Delegation

     To authenticate with Kerberos, set AuthScheme to NEGOTIATE. To use Kerberos delegation, set AuthScheme to KERBEROSDELEGATION. If needed, provide the User, Password, and KerberosSPN. By default, the data provider attempts to communicate with the SPN at the specified Url.

   • SSL/TLS:

     By default, the data provider attempts to negotiate SSL/TLS by checking the server's certificate against the system's trusted certificate store. To specify another certificate, see the SSLServerCert property for the available formats.

   You can then access any cube as a relational table: When you connect the data provider retrieves SSAS metadata and dynamically updates the table schemas. Instead of retrieving metadata every connection, you can set the CacheLocation property to automatically cache to a simple file-based store.

   See the Getting Started section of the CData documentation, under Retrieving Analysis Services Data, to execute SQL-92 queries to the cubes.

   
4. Click Save & Test.
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add SQL Analysis Services Connection page and update the user-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

A Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI from Mistral AI. It is a best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain fine-grained access control.

1. Click on the gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the Settings page.
2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give the PAT a descriptive name and click Create.
4. Note: The PAT is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to SQL Analysis Services data from Mistral AI workflows.

Step 2: Configure the MCP Connector in Mistral Le Chat

With your SQL Analysis Services connection and PAT created in CData Connect AI, the next step is to configure a custom MCP connector inside Mistral Le Chat.

1. Log into Le Chat.
2. From the left-hand menu, click on Intelligence, then select Connectors. Click Add Connector.
3. In the dialog, select Custom MCP Connector and enter the following details:
   • Connector Name: For example, CData_Remote_MCP.
   • Connector Server: https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp (found in the "Connect Data to AI" ribbon in Connect AI).
   • Authentication Method: API Token Authentication.
   • Header Name: Authorization.
   • Header Value: Basic [email protected]:YourPAT (replace "[email protected]" with your CData Connect AI email and "YourPAT" with the PAT created earlier in above format).
   
4. Click Connect to establish the connection.
5. Scroll down to the bottom of the Connections section to confirm that your MCP connection is successfully established.

This step ensures that Mistral Le Chat can securely route queries through the CData Remote MCP Server to your live SQL Analysis Services data.

Step 3: Query Live SQL Analysis Services Data from Mistral AI

Now that your MCP connector is configured in Le Chat, you can begin querying live SQL Analysis Services data directly in your conversations.

1. In Le Chat, click on Chats in the left menu to start a new chat.
2. Enable your MCP connector by clicking the Enable Tools button.
3. Run a discovery query such as Get Catalogs or Get Tables to see the available data sources and schemas connected through CData Connect AI.
4. Test the connection by running a simple query. For example: "Compare the win rate of Opportunities across different industries."

And that's it! You can now interact with live SQL Analysis Services data conversationally inside Mistral Le Chat.

Build Complex AI Agents with CData Connect AI

With the integration complete, you can go beyond simple queries and build complex, multi-step AI agents. These agents can combine reasoning from Mistral AI with secure, real-time access to your enterprise data through CData Connect AI, enabling workflows such as sales forecasting, support triage, customer trend analysis, and more.

Try CData Connect AI for free today and use the full power of Mistral AI agents with secure, live access to your enterprise data.