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

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 Kafka data directly within Excel, facilitating data analysis, collaboration, calculations, and more.This article shows how to connect to Kafka in your Connect AI instance and access and update live Kafka data in Excel spreadsheets.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Kafka, allowing you to easily access live Kafka 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 Kafka, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Kafka data.

Configure Kafka Connectivity for Excel

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

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection

2. Select "Kafka" from the Add Connection panel

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Kafka.

   Set BootstrapServers and the Topic properties to specify the address of your Apache Kafka server, as well as the topic you would like to interact with.

   Authorization Mechanisms

   • SASL Plain: The User and Password properties should be specified. AuthScheme should be set to 'Plain'.
   • SASL SSL: The User and Password properties should be specified. AuthScheme should be set to 'Scram'. UseSSL should be set to true.
   • SSL: The SSLCert and SSLCertPassword properties should be specified. UseSSL should be set to true.
   • Kerberos: The User and Password properties should be specified. AuthScheme should be set to 'Kerberos'.

   You may be required to trust the server certificate. In such cases, specify the TrustStorePath and the TrustStorePassword if necessary.

   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Kafka Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

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

Access Live Kafka Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live Kafka 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. ApacheKafka1), Table (e.g. SampleTable_1), and Columns to import
8. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit
9. Click Execute to import the data

Update Kafka Data from Excel

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

1. Update any cell or cells with changes you want to push to Kafka (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 Kafka, and a notification will appear when the update is complete

Live Access to Kafka Data from Cloud Applications

Now, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Kafka 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.