Excel Spreadsheet Automation on SpaceX Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for SpaceX provides formulas that can query SpaceX data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search SpaceX 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 SpaceX data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as APIConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to SpaceX data, separated by semicolons.

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

  SpaceX API Profile Settings

  No authentication is required to access SpaceX data — the SpaceX API is publicly available. Simply set the Profile connection property to the path of the SpaceX profile file.

• 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 SpaceX data, such as Status.
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 Capsules WHERE Status = '"&B2&"'","Profile="&B1&";Provider=API",B3)


3. Change the filter to change the data.