Integrate OceanBase MCP Server with Continue

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) was introduced and open-sourced by Anthropic in November 2024. It lets large language models interact with external tools and data sources. With MCP, you don't have to copy model output and run it manually—the model can instruct tools to perform actions directly.

The OceanBase MCP Server uses MCP to give LLMs access to OceanBase Database so they can run SQL. With an MCP-capable client you can quickly prototype applications. The server is open source on GitHub.

Continue is an IDE extension that supports MCP Server integration. It works with Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ IDEA.

This topic shows how to integrate the OceanBase MCP Server with Continue to build a backend application quickly.

Prerequisites

• You have deployed OceanBase Database and created a MySQL-compatible tenant.

• You have Python 3.11 or later and pip installed. If your system Python is older, use Miniconda to create a Python 3.11+ environment.

• You have Git installed for your OS.

• You have the Python package manager uv installed. Verify with:

  pip install uv
  uv --version
  

• You have installed the Continue extension in Visual Studio Code or IntelliJ IDEA.

  • After installation, click Add Models to configure the LLM API for Continue. Example configuration:

    

    Example config file:

    name: Local Assistant
    version: 1.0.0
    schema: v1
    models:
        - name: DeepSeek-R1-671B
        provider: deepseek
        model: DeepSeek-R1-671B
        apiBase: *********
        apiKey: ********
    context:
        - provider: code
        - provider: docs
        - provider: diff
        - provider: terminal
        - provider: problems
        - provider: folder
        - provider: codebase
    

Step 1: Get database connection details

Obtain the database connection string from your OceanBase deployment team or administrator. For example:

obclient -h$host -P$port -u$user_name -p$password -D$database_name

Parameters:

• $host: The IP for connecting to OceanBase. Use an ODP address when connecting via OceanBase Database Proxy (ODP), or an OBServer IP for direct connection.

• $port: The connection port. ODP default is 2883; direct connection default is 2881. Both can be customized at deployment.

• $database_name: The database to use.

  Notice

  The user connecting to the tenant must have CREATE, INSERT, DROP, and SELECT privileges on that database.

• $user_name: The tenant account. ODP: username@tenant#cluster or cluster:tenant:username. Direct: username@tenant.

• $password: The account password.

Step 2: Configure the OceanBase MCP Server

Clone the OceanBase MCP Server repository

Download the source:

git clone https://github.com/oceanbase/mcp-oceanbase.git

Change into the project directory:

cd mcp-oceanbase

Install dependencies

From the mcp-oceanbase directory:

uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install .

Add and configure MCP servers

1. Click the rightmost button in the menu bar above the chat to open the MCP panel.

   

2. Click to add MCP Servers.

   Notice

   MCP is only available when Continue is in Agent mode.

   

3. Enter the configuration and confirm. Replace /path/to/your/mcp-oceanbase/src/oceanbase_mcp_server with the absolute path to the oceanbase_mcp_server folder, and set OB_HOST, OB_PORT, OB_USER, OB_PASSWORD, and OB_DATABASE to your database values.

   name: OceanBase
   version: 0.0.1
   schema: v1
   mcpServers:
       - name: OceanBase
           command: uv
           args:
           - --directory
           - /path/to/your/mcp-oceanbase/src/oceanbase_mcp_server
           - run
           - oceanbase_mcp_server
       env:
           OB_HOST: "****"
           OB_PORT: "***"
           OB_USER: "***"
           OB_PASSWORD: "***"
           OB_DATABASE: "***"
   

4. When configuration succeeds, you will see the following: