Windows Azure: importing data from Excel sheet? - excel

I have a Windows Azure mobile service with a sql database.
I was wondering if it's possible to insert records from an excel sheet to an azure database table.
in other words, I have an excel sheet with many data records, I want to export the records to a database table.
is there any tool/service/SDK that provides this ?

I don't know of a tool that does that natively, but you can save your data in Excel as a CSV file, and use the BCP utility to load that data into any SQL database. Here is an older blog about the use of BCP with Azure SQL Database to get you started. If you are familiar with SSIS, you could import your data that way as well.

you could also try that that through SSMS normally (edit all rows and then just add it :-)) or use Access to connect to the front end?

Related

Retrieving and exporting millions of rows from SQL Server

The company that I work for recently moved all of our medical claims onto a SQL Server database, and we now need software to retrieve these records and export them to a csv or txt file. Presently, our claims table has 11 million records but this increases daily.
Can this be done in Desktop BI, Power BI, Desktop Excel, or SQL Server Management Studio? I know that sheets in Desktop Excel have a cap at 1.2M rows, but we're thinking of loading into a data model and exporting that way (perhaps with DaxStudio).
Thank you.
You dont need Power BI or DaxStudio, exporting to CSV can be achieved within SQL Server Management Studio.
Right click on a database -> Tasks -> Export Data
Select your data source, probably using SQL Server Native Client. Input Server Name, Authentication details, and Database name
On the Destination tab, select Flat File, and enter a name / location and select file type of csv
Select "Copy data from one or more tables"
Select your table to export and configure the csv output as needed
On the next screen Run Immediately (you can also generate a rerunnable package from here) and Finish

Is there a way to use excel power query to query a SAS dataset on a local drive?

I've searched everywhere and can't seem to find an answer so hopefully someone here can assist. We have a SAS program set to run weekly that is outputting a dataset to a local drive. Is there a way to get excel Power Query to see it? I can connect to datassets fine that are housed within the database but stored locally is an issue. Outputting this to the database isn't an option for us. Any ideas?
If you have the Stored Process server you can create a web query to access it, as described here: https://www.rawsas.com/sas-as-a-service-an-easy-way-to-get-sas-into-excel-power-bi-and-000s-of-other-tools-languages/
This functionality also comes bundled with https://datacontroller.io (free for up to 10 users)
Disclosure - I wrote the blog and created the product.
Alternatives:
update your job to export your data as CSV or some other format that can be read natively by excel.
Use the IOM interface and VBA
SAS Addin for excel
All these options require server SAS. In short, there is no way that Excel Power Query can connect directly to a SAS dataset on a local drive, as the .sas7bdat format is a proprietary SAS format optimised for use by SAS.

Refreshable pivot table connected to an external source

I am planning to deploy an Excel file where the users would only need to refresh to see the updated data. I can currently do this by sending out a new Excel file every time.
What I have:
Office 365
MariaDB on Digital Ocean
What I want:
Create a pivot table/data model connected to the database and have the data updated real time upon refresh.
I can do this on my own via ODBC but when sharing the file, it asks for the credentials which is saved on my ODBC file. Ideally, I don't want to share the credentials even though it's read-only.
Is there an alternative to ODBC so I can easily share the refreshable pivot table?

AS400 - Data downloading to Excel from AS400 table with multiple members

I recently started a job at a company that still uses AS400 and need some help!
So currently we do not have any BI tool to access system data files directly, so I'm trying to connect AS400 to excel using ODBC and download/display AS400 data directly to excel.
So I accomplished to make the connection and I am able to access schema, table, views from Excel using data connection. But the problem is that some tables have multiple members in it and the excel's pulling data from what I am guessing as the first member that excel sees when all the important data are in other member files...
Is there anyway I could select specific members and download data of that specific member directly to excel?
I can do this when I use IBM's data transfer program, but I would like to find out if it's possible to do directly with excel..
Thanks!
Matt
No.
Multi-membered files are generally not supported by any SQL tool.
However
You can always CREATE ALIAS myname FOR MYLIB/MYTABLE(MYMBR)
Then use myname to access from Excel.
Download a file multiple members to excel
create a logical file over the physical file with all members. Download the logical file with excel data connection.
Hope this helps.
you can access the data in multi-member files via FTP. For example /QSYS.LIB/your_library.LIB/your_file.FILE will be considered a directly by FTP. Depending on the data structure you may be able to do it directly from Excel.

SSRS: Error while querying data from an Excel file (through ODBC)

I am trying to render a simple chart using SSRS. The data is in an Excel sheet. I have set up an user DSN and created a data source in SSRS using ODBC.
I am able to query the excel in Data tab. However while trying to preview, I get the following error:
error [hy000] [microsoft] [odbc excel driver] the connection for
viewing your linked Microsoft Excel worksheet was lost.
Anyone knows why this is happening and how this can be solved?
I would consider creating a SQL Sever Integration Services package to import the data from Excel to a SQL database and using the database as the data source for the report. The SSIS package could be scheduled to periodically refresh the data.
Using a file based data source like Excel is vulnerable to people modifying the structure of the spreadsheet and moving, deleting or locking the file.
Seems to be a fleeting error. I deleted the dataset, created a new one and re-ran again. It worked.

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