Integrate Devin with Live SQL Analysis Services Data Using CData Connect AI

Devin is an AI software engineer from Cognition that plans, writes, and tests code in autonomous sessions. It supports the model context protocol (MCP) through its built-in MCP marketplace, allowing you to install remote MCP servers and give Devin access to external tools and live data sources.

By integrating Devin with CData Connect AI through the built-in MCP Server, Devin gains governed, real-time access to live SQL Analysis Services data. You can list catalogs, explore schemas, and query records from SQL Analysis Services data using natural language prompts, with all data access running securely against authorized sources.

This article explains how to configure SQL Analysis Services connectivity in Connect AI, install the CData Connect AI MCP Server from the Devin MCP marketplace, and verify the integration by querying live SQL Analysis Services data from a Devin session.

Step 1: Configure SQL Analysis Services connectivity for Devin

Connectivity to SQL Analysis Services from Devin is made possible through Connect AI's Remote MCP Server. To interact with SQL Analysis Services data from Devin, start by creating and configuring a SQL Analysis Services connection in 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 and update user-based permissions

With the SQL Analysis Services connection configured, Devin can now connect to SQL Analysis Services data through Connect AI.

Step 2: Install the Connect AI MCP Server in Devin

Next, install the CData Connect AI MCP Server from the Devin MCP servers list so your sessions can discover and call live data tools through Connect AI.

Note: Installing MCP servers in Devin requires the Manage MCP Servers permission. If you don't have this permission, use the Suggest option or contact your organization admin.

1. Log into Devin and navigate to Settings and Connections, then select the MCP servers tab
2. Search for CData Connect AI in the marketplace and select the verified listing

3. Click Install and enable. When prompted, complete the OAuth flow to authenticate with your Connect AI account
4. Once installed, confirm the Enable in sessions toggle is on and click Test tools. Devin validates the connection and lists the available Connect AI tools, such as getCatalogs, getSchemas, getTables, and queryData

With the MCP server installed and enabled, the Connect AI tools are available to every Devin session in your workspace.

Step 3: Query live SQL Analysis Services data from Devin

With the integration complete, start a Devin session and interact with live SQL Analysis Services data through natural language prompts.

1. From the Devin home page, start a new session
2. In the session prompt, ask Devin to work with your Connect AI data, for example:
   • Can you list the connections in CData Connect AI
   • Show the available schemas and tables for SQL Analysis Services
   • Query the top 5 records from a table in SQL Analysis Services
3. Devin calls the Connect AI MCP Server and returns live results from SQL Analysis Services data directly in the session. You can follow the tool calls, inputs, and outputs in the Progress panel

At this point, Devin communicates with the Connect AI MCP Server and retrieves live SQL Analysis Services data through remote MCP tools directly from your sessions, whether you're exploring data, building features against it, or automating engineering tasks.

Get started with CData Connect AI

To access hundreds of SaaS, big data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect AI today. Download a free 14-day trial of CData Connect AI, and our Support Team is available to help with any questions you have.