Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

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

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as CockroachDBConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to CockroachDB data, separated by semicolons.

  Set the following to connect to CockroachDB.

  • Server: The host name or IP address of the server.
  • Port: The port number of the CockroachDB server. If not specified, the default port is 26257.
  • Database: The name of the Cockroach database. If not specified, you connect to the user's default database.
  • User: The Cockroach DB user account used to authenticate.
  • Password: The password used to authenticate the 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 CockroachDB 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=CockroachDB",B7)
3. Change the filter to change the data.