Using the CData ODBC Driver for Exa in PyCharm

The CData ODBC Drivers can be used in any environment that supports loading an ODBC Driver. In this tutorial we will explore using the CData ODBC Driver for Exa from within PyCharm. Included are steps for adding the CData ODBC Driver as a data source, as well as basic PyCharm code to query the data source and display results.

To begin, this tutorial will assume that you have already installed the CData ODBC Driver for Exa as well as PyCharm.

Add Pyodbc to the Project

Follow the steps below to add the pyodbc module to your project.

1. Click File -> Settings to open the project settings window.
2. Click Project Interpreter from the Project: YourProjectName menu.
3. To add pyodbc, click the + button and enter pyodbc.
4. Click Install Package to install pyodbc.

Connect to Exa

You can now connect with an ODBC connection string or a DSN. See the Getting Started section in the CData driver documentation for a guide to creating a DSN on your OS.

Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Exa Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Exa.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Exa (see below).

Exa API Profile Settings

Visit dashboard.exa.ai, sign in or create an account, and generate an API key from your API settings.

Below is the syntax for a DSN:

[CData API Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Exa
Description = My Description
Profile = C:\profiles\Exa.apip
ProfileSettings = 'APIKey = your_api_key'

Execute SQL to Exa

Instantiate a Cursor and use the execute method of the Cursor class to execute any SQL statement.

import pyodbc

cnxn = pyodbc.connect('DRIVER={CData ODBC Driver for API};Profile = C:\profiles\Exa.apip;ProfileSettings = 'APIKey = your_api_key';')
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT RequestId, Answer FROM Answer WHERE RequestId = 'my-request-id'")
rows = cursor.fetchall()
for row in rows:
  print(row.RequestId, row.Answer)

After connecting to Exa in PyCharm using the CData ODBC Driver, you will be able to build Python apps with access to Exa data as if it were a standard database. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback regarding this tutorial, please contact us at [email protected].