Import and Visualize AlloyDB Data in Power View

NOTE: For Excel for the web (Excel 365) and Excel 2019 or higher, Power View is no longer supported. Microsoft encourages the use of Power BI for those users. Please read our article on working with AlloyDB in Power BI using our Power BI connector for more information.

You can use the built-in ODBC support in Excel to rapidly create Power View reports featuring AlloyDB data. This article shows how to use the Data Connection Wizard, accessible from the Data ribbon, to import AlloyDB data into a Power View report.

Connect to AlloyDB as an ODBC Data Source

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.

The following connection properties are usually required in order to connect to AlloyDB.

• Server: The host name or IP of the server hosting the AlloyDB database.
• User: The user which will be used to authenticate with the AlloyDB server.
• Password: The password which will be used to authenticate with the AlloyDB server.

You can also optionally set the following:

• Database: The database to connect to when connecting to the AlloyDB Server. If this is not set, the user's default database will be used.
• Port: The port of the server hosting the AlloyDB database. This property is set to 5432 by default.

Authenticating with Standard Authentication

Standard authentication (using the user/password combination supplied earlier) is the default form of authentication.

No further action is required to leverage Standard Authentication to connect.

Authenticating with pg_hba.conf Auth Schemes

There are additional methods of authentication available which must be enabled in the pg_hba.conf file on the AlloyDB server.

Find instructions about authentication setup on the AlloyDB Server here.

Authenticating with MD5 Authentication

This authentication method must be enabled by setting the auth-method in the pg_hba.conf file to md5.

Authenticating with SASL Authentication

This authentication method must be enabled by setting the auth-method in the pg_hba.conf file to scram-sha-256.

Authenticating with Kerberos

The authentication with Kerberos is initiated by AlloyDB Server when the ∏ is trying to connect to it. You should set up Kerberos on the AlloyDB Server to activate this authentication method. Once you have Kerberos authentication set up on the AlloyDB Server, see the Kerberos section of the help documentation for details on how to authenticate with Kerberos.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Connect with the Data Connection Wizard

Follow the steps below to connect to the DSN from the Data Connection Wizard in Excel.

1. In recent versions of Excel the Data Connection Wizard is not visible by default. To enable the Data Connection Wizard in Excel, go to File -> Options -> Data and under Show legacy data import wizards check the From Data Connection Wizard (Legacy).
2. After enabling the Data Connection Wizard, on the Data tab you can click Get Data -> Legacy Wizards -> From Data Connection Wizard (Legacy).
3. In the Data Connection Wizard, select the ODBC DSN option.
4. Select the ODBC DSN for AlloyDB from the list.

5. Select the tables you want to work with.

   If you want to import multiple tables, deselect the "Connect to a specific table" option. After you connect to the data source, you can select multiple tables: After you click Finish to close the Data Connection Wizard, select the "Enable selection of multiple tables" option in the Select Table dialog.

6. In the Import Data dialog, select the destination for your data. For example, select the Table option and the Existing worksheet option. Then click the cell in your worksheet where results should be output.
7. Click Insert -> Power View to create a new Power View report.

Create a Table

Tables are the starting point for charts and other representations of your data. To create a table, select a column in the field list. You can also drag and drop table names and column names onto the view.

Create Data Visualizations

On the Design tab, you can change tables into charts and other visualizations.