Using the CData ODBC Driver for Power BI XMLA 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 Power BI XMLA 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 Power BI XMLA 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 Power BI XMLA

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.

By default, use Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) to connect to Microsoft Power BI XMLA. Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) is Microsoft's multi-tenant, cloud-based directory and identity management service. It is user-based authentication that requires that you set AuthScheme to EntraID (formerly AzureAD).

For more information on other authentication schemes, refer to the Help documentation.

Below is the syntax for a DSN:

[CData PowerBIXMLA Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Power BI XMLA
Description = My Description
AuthScheme = EntraID
InitiateOAuth = GETANDREFRESH

Execute SQL to Power BI XMLA

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 PowerBIXMLA};AuthScheme = EntraID;InitiateOAuth = GETANDREFRESH;')
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT Country, Education FROM Customer WHERE Country = 'Australia'")
rows = cursor.fetchall()
for row in rows:
 print(row.Country, row.Education)

After connecting to Power BI XMLA in PyCharm using the CData ODBC Driver, you will be able to build Python apps with access to Power BI XMLA 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].