Use ChatGPT to Talk to Your JSON Services via CData Connect AI

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Leverage the CData Connect AI Remote MCP Server to enable ChatGPT to securely answer questions and take actions on your JSON services for you.

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, launched in November 2022. Based on large language models (LLMs), it enables users to refine and steer conversations through natural language processing. ChatGPT's developer mode, available to Plus and Pro subscribers, provides full Model Context Protocol (MCP) support for connecting to external data sources and tools.

CData Connect AI offers a dedicated cloud-to-cloud interface for connecting to JSON services. The CData Connect AI Remote MCP Server enables secure communication between ChatGPT and JSON. This allows you to ask questions and take actions on your JSON services using ChatGPT, all without the need for data replication to a natively supported database. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently channels all supported SQL operations, including filters and JOINs, directly to JSON. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly deliver the requested JSON services.

Step 1: Configure JSON Connectivity for ChatGPT

Connectivity to JSON from ChatGPT is made possible through CData Connect AI Remote MCP. To interact with JSON services from ChatGPT, we start by creating and configuring a JSON connection in CData Connect AI.

  1. Log into your Connect AI account, click Sources, and then click Add Connection.
  2. Adding a Connection
  3. Select "JSON" from the Add Connection panel.
  4. Selecting a data source
  5. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to JSON.

    See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models JSON APIs as bidirectional database tables and JSON files as read-only views (local files, files stored on popular cloud services, and FTP servers). The major authentication schemes are supported, including HTTP Basic, Digest, NTLM, OAuth, and FTP. See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation for authentication guides.

    After setting the URI and providing any authentication values, set DataModel to more closely match the data representation to the structure of your data.

    The DataModel property is the controlling property over how your data is represented into tables and toggles the following basic configurations.

    • Document (default): Model a top-level, document view of your JSON data. The data provider returns nested elements as aggregates of data.
    • FlattenedDocuments: Implicitly join nested documents and their parents into a single table.
    • Relational: Return individual, related tables from hierarchical data. The tables contain a primary key and a foreign key that links to the parent document.

    See the Modeling JSON Data chapter for more information on configuring the relational representation. You will also find the sample data used in the following examples. The data includes entries for people, the cars they own, and various maintenance services performed on those cars.

    Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  6. Click Save & Test

With the connection configured, we are ready to connect to JSON services from ChatGPT.

Step 2: Connect ChatGPT to CData Connect AI

Follow these steps to add a CData Connect AI connection in ChatGPT:

  1. Sign in to ChatGPT with a Plus or Pro subscription.
  2. Navigate to Apps from the left panel.
  3. Select the CData Connect AI app from the list.
  4. . Search for CData Connect AI
  5. Click Connect to authenticate to your Connect AI account.
  6. Click Connect to authenticate
  7. Click Sign in with CData Connect AI to add Connect AI to your ChatGPT account.
  8. Sign in with CData Connect AI
  9. After successful authorization, you will be redirected back to ChatGPT.
  10. Click Start Chat to start a new conversation in ChatGPT with Connect AI connected at the background.
  11. Start Chat

Step 3: Explore Live JSON Services with ChatGPT

  1. Start a new conversation in ChatGPT.
  2. Connect AI should ideally be automatically enabled in the chat. If not, navigate to -> More -> CData Connect AI, under the chatbox, to enable the connector from the dropdown
  3. Enable CData Connect AI in the chat
  4. You can now start exploring your data with natural language prompts. ChatGPT will use the Connect AI MCP server to query your live JSON services. Example prompts:
    • "Show me all customers from the last 30 days"
    • "What are my top performing products?"
    • "Analyze sales trends for this quarter"
    • "List all active projects and their current status"
    Refer to CData prompt library for more prompt ideas.
  5. Using natural language to explore your JSON services (Salesforce used here).
  6. Permit ChatGPT to access your JSON services. Click Query Data to continue, or Deny to refuse.
  7. Give permissions to ChatGPT.
  8. ChatGPT translates your natural language queries into SQL and execute them against your JSON data through the Connect AI MCP server.
  9. ChatGPT shows the desired results from your JSON services based on the prompts

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