Using the CData ODBC Driver for Exact Online in PyCharm

The CData ODBC Drivers can be used in any environment that supports loading an ODBC Driver. In this tutorial we will explore using the CData ODBC Driver for Exact Online from within PyCharm. Included are steps for adding the CData ODBC Driver as a data source, as well as basic PyCharm code to query the data source and display results.

To begin, this tutorial will assume that you have already installed the CData ODBC Driver for Exact Online as well as PyCharm.

Add Pyodbc to the Project

Follow the steps below to add the pyodbc module to your project.

1. Click File -> Settings to open the project settings window.
2. Click Project Interpreter from the Project: YourProjectName menu.
3. To add pyodbc, click the + button and enter pyodbc.
4. Click Install Package to install pyodbc.

Connect to Exact Online

You can now connect with an ODBC connection string or a DSN. See the Getting Started section in the CData driver documentation for a guide to creating a DSN on your OS.

Exact Online uses the OAuth authentication standard. You can use the embedded OAuth credentials or you can register an OAuth app with Exact to obtain your own. In addition to the OAuth values, provide the Region. If Division is not set, the default Division is determined.

See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for more information.

Below is the syntax for a DSN:

[CData ExactOnline Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Exact Online
Description = My Description
Region = 'United States'
Division = 5512
InitiateOAuth = GETANDREFRESH

Execute SQL to Exact Online

Instantiate a Cursor and use the execute method of the Cursor class to execute any SQL statement.

import pyodbc

cnxn = pyodbc.connect('DRIVER={CData ODBC Driver for ExactOnline};Region = 'United States';Division = 5512;InitiateOAuth = GETANDREFRESH;')
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT Name, CreditLinePurchase FROM Accounts WHERE IsCompetitor = 'False'")
rows = cursor.fetchall()
for row in rows:
 print(row.Name, row.CreditLinePurchase)

After connecting to Exact Online in PyCharm using the CData ODBC Driver, you will be able to build Python apps with access to Exact Online data as if it were a standard database. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback regarding this tutorial, please contact us at [email protected].