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The Twitter ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from Twitter, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

With the Twitter ODBC Driver accessing live Tweets, Followers, Messages, Searches, etc. is as easy as querying a database.

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Replicate Twitter Data from PowerShell


Write a quick PowerShell script to query Twitter data. Use connectivity to the live data to replicate Twitter data to SQL Server.



The CData ODBC Driver for Twitter enables out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft's built-in support for ODBC. The ODBC driver instantly integrates connectivity to the real Twitter data with PowerShell.

You can use the .NET Framework Provider for ODBC built into PowerShell to quickly automate integration tasks like replicating Twitter data to other databases. This article shows how to replicate Twitter data to SQL Server in 5 lines of code.

You can also write PowerShell code to execute create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations. See the examples below.

Create an ODBC Data Source for Twitter

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

All tables require authentication. You can connect using your User and Password or OAuth. To authenticate using OAuth, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL or you can register an app to obtain your own.

If you intend to communicate with Twitter only as the currently authenticated user, then you can obtain the OAuthAccessToken and OAuthAccessTokenSecret directly by registering an app.

See the Getting Started chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

Connect to Twitter

The code below shows how to use the DSN to initialize the connection to Twitter data in PowerShell:

$conn = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcConnection $conn.ConnectionString = "DSN=CData Twitter Source x64"

Back Up Twitter Data to SQL Server

After you enable caching, you can use the code below to replicate data to SQL Server.

Set the following connection properties to configure the caching database:

  • CacheProvider: The name of the ADO.NET provider. This can be found in the Machine.config for your version of .NET. For example, to configure SQL Server, enter System.Data.SqlClient.

  • CacheConnection: The connection string of properties required to connect to the database. Below is an example for SQL Server:

    Server=localhost;Database=RSB;User Id=sqltest;Password=sqltest;

The SQL query in the example can be used to refresh the entire cached table, including its schema. Any already existing cache is deleted.

$conn.Open() # Create and execute the SQL Query $SQL = "CACHE DROP EXISTING SELECT * FROM " + $Tweets $cmd = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcCommand($sql,$conn) $count = $cmd.ExecuteNonQuery() $conn.Close()

The driver gives you complete control over the caching functionality. See the help documentation for more caching commands and usage examples. See the help documentation for steps to replicate to other databases.

Other Operations

To retrieve Twitter data in PowerShell, call the Fill method of the OdbcDataAdapter method. To execute data manipulation commands, initialize the OdbcCommand object and then call ExecuteNonQuery. Below are some more examples CRUD commands to Twitter through the .NET Framework Provider for ODBC:

Retrieve Twitter Data

$sql="SELECT From_User_Name, Retweet_Count from Tweets" $da= New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcDataAdapter($sql, $conn) $dt= New-Object System.Data.DataTable $da.Fill($dt) $dt.Rows | foreach { $dt.Columns | foreach ($col in dt{ Write-Host $1[$_] } }

Update Twitter Data

$cmd = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcCommand("UPDATE Tweets SET From_User_Name='twitter' WHERE Id = @myId", $conn) $cmd.Parameters.Add(new System.Data.Odbc.OdbcParameter("myId","001d000000YBRseAAH") $cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()

Insert Twitter Data

$cmd = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcCommand("INSERT INTO Tweets SET From_User_Name='twitter' WHERE Id = @myId", $conn) $cmd.Parameters.Add(new System.Data.Odbc.OdbcParameter("myId","001d000000YBRseAAH") $cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()

Delete Twitter Data

$cmd = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcCommand("DELETE FROM Tweets WHERE Id = @myid", $conn) $cmd.Parameters.Add(new System.Data.Odbc.OdbcParameter("myId","001d000000YBRseAAH") $cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()