How to Access Live REST Data in Power Automate Desktop via ODBC

The CData ODBC Driver for REST enables you to access live REST data in workflow automation tools like Power Automate. This article shows how to integrate REST data into a simple workflow, moving REST data into a CSV file.

Through optimized data processing, CData ODBC Drivers offer unmatched performance for interacting with live REST data in Microsoft Power Automate. When you issue complex SQL queries from Power Automate to REST, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to REST and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (e.g. SQL functions and JOIN operations).

Connect to REST as an ODBC Data Source

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models REST APIs as bidirectional database tables and XML/JSON files as read-only views (local files, files stored on popular cloud services, and FTP servers). The major authentication schemes are supported, including HTTP Basic, Digest, NTLM, OAuth, and FTP. See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation for authentication guides.

After setting the and providing any authentication values, set to "XML" or "JSON" and set to more closely match the data representation to the structure of your data.

The property is the controlling property over how your data is represented into tables and toggles the following basic configurations.

• Document (default): Model a top-level, document view of your REST data. The data provider returns nested elements as aggregates of data.
• FlattenedDocuments: Implicitly join nested documents and their parents into a single table.
• Relational: Return individual, related tables from hierarchical data. The tables contain a primary key and a foreign key that links to the parent document.

See the Modeling REST Data chapter for more information on configuring the relational representation. You will also find the sample data used in the following examples. The data includes entries for people, the cars they own, and various maintenance services performed on those cars.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing workflows.

Integrate REST Data into Power Automate Workflows

After configuring the DSN for REST, you are ready to integrate REST data into your Power Automate workflows. Open Microsoft Power Automate, add a new flow, and name the flow.

👁 A new flow in Power Automate

In the flow editor, you can add the actions to connect to REST, query REST using SQL, and write the query results to a CSV document.

Add an Open SQL Connection Action

Add an "Open SQL connection" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

• Connection string: DSN=CData REST Source

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Open SQL connection' action

Add an Execute SQL Statement Action

Add an "Execute SQL statement" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

• Get connection by: SQL connection variable
• SQL connection: %SQLConnection% (the variable from the "Open SQL connection" action above)
• SQL statement: SELECT * FROM people

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Execute SQL statement' action

Add a Write to CSV File Action

Add a "Write to CSV file" action (Actions -> File) and configure the properties.

• Variable to write to: %QueryResult% (the variable from the "Execute SQL statement" action above)
• File path: set to a file on disk
• Configure Advanced settings as needed.

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Write to CSV file' action

Add a Close SQL Connection Action

Add a "Close SQL connection" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

• SQL Connection: %SQLConnection% (the variable from the "Open SQL connection" action above)

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Close SQL connection' action

Save & Run the Flow

Once you have configured all the actions for the flow, click the disk icon to save the flow. Click the play icon to run the flow.

👁 A fully configured workflow

Now you have a workflow to move REST data into a CSV file.

👁 Application data in a CSV file (Salesforce is shown)

With the CData ODBC Driver for REST, you get live connectivity to REST data within your Microsoft Power Automate workflows.

Related Power Automate Articles

This article explains how to use the CData ODBC Driver for REST with Power Automate Desktop. Check out our other articles for more ways to work with Power Automate (Desktop & Online):

• REST Data in Power Automate Desktop using CData Connect