Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Amazon DynamoDB Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Amazon DynamoDB provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete Amazon DynamoDB data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Amazon DynamoDB 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 Amazon DynamoDB data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as AmazonDynamoDBConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Amazon DynamoDB data, separated by semicolons.

  The connection to Amazon DynamoDB is made using your AccessKey, SecretKey, and optionally your Domain and Region. Your AccessKey and SecretKey can be obtained on the security credentials page for your Amazon Web Services account. Your Region will be displayed in the upper left-hand corner when you are logged into DynamoDB.

• 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 Amazon DynamoDB data, such as FirstName.
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 Lead WHERE FirstName = '"&B5&"'","Access Key="&B1&";Secret Key="&B2&";Domain="&B3&";Region="&B4&";Provider=AmazonDynamoDB",B6)

👁 Formula inputs used in this example. (Google Apps is shown.)

3. Change the filter to change the data. 👁 The outputs of the formula. (Google Apps is shown.)