Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for AlloyDB provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete AlloyDB data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search AlloyDB data for a user-specified value and then organize the results into an Excel spreadsheet.

The syntax of the CDATAQUERY formula is the following: =CDATAQUERY(Query, [Connection], [Parameters], [ResultLocation]);

This formula requires three inputs:

• Query: The declaration of the AlloyDB data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as AlloyDBConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to AlloyDB data, separated by semicolons.

  The following connection properties are usually required in order to connect to AlloyDB.

  • Server: The host name or IP of the server hosting the AlloyDB database.
  • User: The user which will be used to authenticate with the AlloyDB server.
  • Password: The password which will be used to authenticate with the AlloyDB server.

  You can also optionally set the following:

  • Database: The database to connect to when connecting to the AlloyDB Server. If this is not set, the user's default database will be used.
  • Port: The port of the server hosting the AlloyDB database. This property is set to 5432 by default.

  Authenticating with Standard Authentication

  Standard authentication (using the user/password combination supplied earlier) is the default form of authentication.

  No further action is required to leverage Standard Authentication to connect.

  Authenticating with pg_hba.conf Auth Schemes

  There are additional methods of authentication available which must be enabled in the pg_hba.conf file on the AlloyDB server.

  Find instructions about authentication setup on the AlloyDB Server here.

  Authenticating with MD5 Authentication

  This authentication method must be enabled by setting the auth-method in the pg_hba.conf file to md5.

  Authenticating with SASL Authentication

  This authentication method must be enabled by setting the auth-method in the pg_hba.conf file to scram-sha-256.

  Authenticating with Kerberos

  The authentication with Kerberos is initiated by AlloyDB Server when the ∏ is trying to connect to it. You should set up Kerberos on the AlloyDB Server to activate this authentication method. Once you have Kerberos authentication set up on the AlloyDB Server, see the Kerberos section of the help documentation for details on how to authenticate with Kerberos.

• ResultLocation: The cell that the output of results should start from.

Pass Spreadsheet Cells as Inputs to the Query

The procedure below results in a spreadsheet that organizes all the formula inputs in the first column.

1. Define cells for the formula inputs. In addition to the connection inputs, add another input to define a criterion for a filter to be used to search AlloyDB data, such as ShipCountry.
2. In another cell, write the formula, referencing the cell values from the user input cells defined above. Single quotes are used to enclose values such as addresses that may contain spaces.
=CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM Orders WHERE ShipCountry = '"&B6&"'","User="&B1&";Password="&B2&";Database="&B3&";Server="&B4&";Port="&B5&";Provider=AlloyDB",B7)
3. Change the filter to change the data.