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

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

Configure Lakebase Connectivity for Excel

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

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

2. Select "Lakebase" from the Add Connection panel

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Lakebase. To connect to Databricks Lakebase, start by setting the following properties:
   • DatabricksInstance: The Databricks instance or server hostname, provided in the format instance-abcdef12-3456-7890-abcd-abcdef123456.database.cloud.databricks.com.
   • Server: The host name or IP address of the server hosting the Lakebase database.
   • Port (optional): The port of the server hosting the Lakebase database, set to 5432 by default.
   • Database (optional): The database to connect to after authenticating to the Lakebase Server, set to the authenticating user's default database by default.

   OAuth Client Authentication

   To authenicate using OAuth client credentials, you need to configure an OAuth client in your service principal. In short, you need to do the following:

   1. Create and configure a new service principal
   2. Assign permissions to the service principal
   3. Create an OAuth secret for the service principal

   For more information, refer to the Setting Up OAuthClient Authentication section in the Help documentation.

   OAuth PKCE Authentication

   To authenticate using the OAuth code type with PKCE (Proof Key for Code Exchange), set the following properties:

   • AuthScheme: OAuthPKCE.
   • User: The authenticating user's user ID.

   For more information, refer to the Help documentation.

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

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

Access Live Lakebase Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live Lakebase 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. Lakebase1), Table (e.g. Orders), and Columns to import
8. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit
9. Click Execute to import the data

Update Lakebase Data from Excel

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

1. Update any cell or cells with changes you want to push to Lakebase (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 Lakebase

A notification will appear when the update is complete

Live Access to Lakebase Data from Cloud Applications

Now, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Lakebase 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 300+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.