Work with Live Amazon S3 Data in Power Query

Power Query is a data transformation and data preparation engine. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Amazon S3 data from Power Query. This article shows how to connect to Connect AI from Power Query through Microsoft Excel and get live access to Amazon S3 data for transformation and preparation.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL, cloud-to-cloud interface for Amazon S3, allowing you to easily integrate with live Amazon S3 data in Power Query — without replicating the data. CData Connect AI looks exactly like a SQL Server database to Power Query and uses optimized data processing out of the box to push all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Amazon S3, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Amazon S3 data.

Configure Amazon S3 Connectivity for Power Query

Connectivity to Amazon S3 from Power Query is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Amazon S3 data from Power Query, we start by creating and configuring a Amazon S3 connection.

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

2. Select "Amazon S3" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Amazon S3.

   To authorize Amazon S3 requests, provide the credentials for an administrator account or for an IAM user with custom permissions. Set AccessKey to the access key Id. Set SecretKey to the secret access key.

   Note: You can connect as the AWS account administrator, but it is recommended to use IAM user credentials to access AWS services.

   For information on obtaining the credentials and other authentication methods, refer to the Getting Started section of the Help documentation.

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Amazon S3 Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions
   

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
   
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Amazon S3 data from Power Query.

Working with Live Amazon S3 Data in Power Query

With the connection to Connect AI configured, you are ready to work with live Amazon S3 data in Power Query.

1. In Microsoft Excel, open the Power Query Editor (from the Data ribbon, click Get Data -> Launch Power Query Editor) 👁 Opening the Power Query Editor
   
2. Click New Source -> SQL Server 👁 Creating a new SQL Server Source
   
3. In the SQL Server database modal:
   • Set Server to tds.cdata.com,14333
   • (Optional) Set Database to the name of the Amazon S3 connection (e.g. AmazonS31 )
   👁 Configuring the Server
   
4. In the SQL Server credentials modal, select "Database" and
   • Set User to your Connect AI username (e.g. [email protected] )
   • Set Password to the PAT for the above user
   👁 Configuring the credentials
   
5. Click Connect
6. Select the table(s) you wish to work with in the Navigator and click "OK" 👁 Selecting the table(s) (Salesforce is shown)
   

At this point, you have live access to Amazon S3 data from Power Query for transformation and preparation.

SQL Access to Amazon S3 Data

Now you have a direct connection to live Amazon S3 data from Microsoft Power Query. You can create more connections and transform and preparte your data to better drive business — all without replicating Amazon S3 data.

To get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, sign up for a free trial of CData Connect AI.