Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Oracle Data with the QUERY Formula

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

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as OracleOCIConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Oracle data, separated by semicolons.

  To connect to Oracle, you'll first need to update your PATH variable and ensure it contains a folder location that includes the native DLLs. The native DLLs can be found in the lib folder inside the installation directory. Once you've done this, set the following to connect:

  • Port: The port used to connect to the server hosting the Oracle database.
  • User: The user Id provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
  • Password: The password provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
  • Service Name: The service name of the Oracle database.
• 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 Oracle data, such as Country.
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 Customers WHERE Country = '"&B5&"'","User="&B1&";Password="&B2&";Server="&B3&";Port="&B4&";Provider=OracleOCI",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.)