Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Azure Synapse Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Azure Synapse provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete Azure Synapse data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Azure Synapse 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 Azure Synapse data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as AzureSynapseConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Azure Synapse data, separated by semicolons.

  Connecting to Azure Synapse

  In addition to providing authentication (see below), set the following properties to connect to a Azure Synapse database:

  • Server: The server running Azure. You can find this by logging into the Azure portal and navigating to Azure Synapse Analytics -> Select your database -> Overview -> Server name.
  • Database: The name of the database, as seen in the Azure portal on the Azure Synapse Analytics page.

  Authenticating to Azure Synapse

  Connect to Azure Synapse using the following properties:

  • User: The username provided for authentication with Azure.
  • Password: The password associated with the authenticating user.
• 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 Azure Synapse data, such as ProductName.
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 Products WHERE ProductName = '"&B5&"'","User="&B1&";Password="&B2&";Server="&B3&";Database="&B4&";Provider=AzureSynapse",B6)


3. Change the filter to change the data.