Access Live CouchDB Data in Excel (Desktop) via Connect AI

Dibyendu Datta
Dibyendu Datta
Lead Technology Evangelist
Use CData Connect AI to gain access to live CouchDB data from your Excel spreadsheets.

Microsoft Excel is a widely used spreadsheet software application, primarily used for tasks related to data management, analysis, and visualization. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate access to CouchDB data directly within Excel, facilitating data analysis, collaboration, calculations, and more.This article shows how to connect to CouchDB in your Connect AI instance and access and update live CouchDB data in Excel spreadsheets.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for CouchDB, allowing you to easily access live CouchDB data in Excel for the web. Simply use the Connect AI Add-In to query live data (or write your own). Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported query operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to CouchDB, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return CouchDB data.

This setup requires a CData Connect AI instance and the CData Connect AI Add-In for Excel. To get started, sign up a free trial of Connect AI and install the free Connect AI Excel Add-In.


Configure CouchDB Connectivity for Excel

Connectivity to CouchDB from Excel is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with CouchDB data from Excel, we start by creating and configuring a CouchDB connection.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
  2. Select "CouchDB" from the Add Connection panel
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to CouchDB.

    Set the following to connect:

    • Url: The Url of your instance. For example: http://localhost:5984
    • User The Apache CouchDB user account used to authenticate.
    • Password The Apache CouchDB password associated with the authenticating user.
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add CouchDB Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to CouchDB data from Excel.

Access Live CouchDB Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live CouchDB data.

  1. Open Excel, create a new sheet (or open an existing one).
  2. Click Insert and click Get Add-ins. (if you have already installed the Add-In, jump to step 4).
  3. Search for CData Connect AI Add-In and install the Add-in.
  4. Click Data and open the CData Connect AI Add-In.
  5. In the Add-In panel, click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance
  6. In the CData Connect AI panel in Excel, click Import
  7. Choose a Connection (e.g. ApacheCouchDB1), Table (e.g. Movies), and Columns to import
  8. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit
  9. Click Execute to import the data

Update CouchDB Data from Excel

In addition to viewing CouchDB data in Excel, CData Connect AI also lets you update and delete CouchDB data. Begin by importing data (as described above).

  1. Update any cell or cells with changes you want to push to CouchDB (your changes will be in red)
  2. In the CData Connect AI Add-In panel, select Update
  3. Optionally highlight the cell(s) you wish to update and select an update option ("Update All" or "Update Selected")
  4. Click Execute to push the updates to CouchDB, and a notification will appear when the update is complete
  5. Live Access to CouchDB Data from Cloud Applications

    Now, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live CouchDB data from your Excel workbook. You can add more data to your workbook for calculations, aggregations, collaboration, and more.

    Try CData Connect AI and get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.

Ready to get started?

Learn more about CData Connect AI or sign up for free trial access:

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