Linux DSN Configuration

This section describes how to set up ODBC connectivity and configure DSNs on several Linux distributions: Debian-based systems, like Ubuntu, and Red Hat Linux platforms, like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, and Fedora.

Minimum Linux Versions

Here are the minimum supported versions for Red Hat-based and Debian-based systems:


OS	Min. Version
Ubuntu	11.04
Debian	7
RHEL	6.9
CentOS	6.9
Fedora	13
SUSE	12.1

Installing the Driver Dependencies

Run the following commands as root or with sudo to install the necessary dependencies:

Debian/Ubuntu:

apt-get install libc6 libstdc++6 zlib1g libgcc1

RHEL/CentOS/Fedora:
```
yum install glibc libstdc++ zlib libgcc
```

Here are the corresponding libraries required by the driver:


Debian/Ubuntu Package	RHEL/CentOS/Fedora Package	File
libc6	glibc	linux-vdso.1
libc6	glibc	libm.so.6
libc6	glibc	librt.so.1
libc6	glibc	libdl.so.2
libc6	glibc	libpthread.so.0
libc6	glibc	libc.so.6
libc6	glibc	ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
libstdc++6	libstdc++	libstdc++.so.6
zlib1g	zlib	libz.so.1
libgcc1	libgcc	libgcc_s.so.1

Installing the Driver

You can use standard package management systems to install the driver.

On Debian-based systems, like Ubuntu, run the following command with root or sudo:

dpkg -i /path/to/driver/setup/ExcelOnlineODBCDriverforUnix.deb

On systems that support the RPM package format, run the following command with root or sudo:

rpm -ivh /path/to/driver/ExcelOnlineODBCDriverforUnix.rpm

Licensing the Driver

Run the following commands to license the driver. To activate a trial, omit the <key> input.

cd /opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-excelonline/bin/
sudo ./install-license.sh <key>

Connecting through the Driver Manager

The driver manager loads the driver and passes function calls from the application to the driver. You need to register the driver with the driver manager and you define DSNs in the driver manager's configuration files.

The driver installation registers the driver with the unixODBC driver manager and creates a system DSN. The unixODBC driver manager can be used from Python and from many other applications. Your application may embed another driver manager.

Creating the DSN

See Using unixODBC to install unixODBC and configure DSNs. See Using the DataDirect Driver Manager to create a DSN to connect to OBIEE, Informatica, and SAS.

Connecting to a Workbook

The driver exposes workbooks and worksheets from drives you specify in your Microsoft account. You can connect to a workbook by providing authentication to Excel Online and setting any of the following properties that control what drives are discovered:

Drive: Set this to the ID of a specific drive. You can use the Drives and SharePointSites views to view all the sites and drives you have access to.
SharepointURL: Set this to the browser URL of a SharePoint site. The driver will expose all drives under the site.
OAuthClientId: If AuthScheme is set to AzureServicePrincipal or if OAuthGrantType is set to CLIENT, the drive associated with your OAuth app will be exposed.
If none of the above are specified, the personal drive for the authenticated user will be used.

To control what workbooks and worksheets are exposed from the discovered drives, or what drives are exposed, you can use the following properties:

Workbook: Set to the name or Id of the workbook. If you want to view a list of information about the available workbooks, execute a query to the Workbooks view after you authenticate.
UseSandbox: Set to true if you are connecting to a workbook in a sandbox account. Otherwise, leave this blank to connect to a production account.
BrowsableSchemas: Set to a list of drive names. The drives that are exposed will be filtered by this list.
Tables: Set to a list of table names, as exposed by the driver. The tables that are exposed will be filtered by this list.

Authenticating to Microsoft Excel Online

There are two authentication methods available for connecting to Microsoft Excel Online data source, the OAuth 2.0 (AzureAD) and the MSI Authentication methods.

OAuth (AzureAD)

To authenticate using OAuth, you may leave the OAuth credentials blank to use the driver's embedded app.

Alternatively, you may create a custom app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret to use custom OAuth credentials. In addition to those properties, set CallbackURL.

AuthScheme: Set this to AzureAD.

Azure Service Principal

Azure Service Principal is a connection type that goes through OAuth. Set your AuthScheme to AzureServicePrincipal. The authentication as an Azure Service Principal is handled via the OAuth Client Credentials flow, and it does not involve direct user authentication. Instead, credentials are created for just the app itself. All tasks taken by the app are done without a default user context, but based on the assigned roles. The application access to the resources is controlled through the assigned roles' permissions.

Note: You must create a custom application prior to assigning a role. See Creating a Custom AzureAD App for more information.

When authenticating using an Azure Service Principal, you must register an application with an Azure AD tenant. Follow the steps below to create a new service principal that can be used with the role-based access control.

Assign a role to the application

To access resources in your subscription, you must assign a role to the application.

Open the Subscriptions page by searching and selecting the Subscriptions service from the search bar.
Select the particular subscription to assign the application to.
Open the Access control (IAM) and select Add > Add role assignment to open the Add role assignment page.
Select Owner as the role to assign to your created Azure AD app.

Complete the Authentication

You are ready to connect after setting one of the below connection properties groups, depending on the configured app authentication (client secret or certificate).

In both methods

Before choosing client secret or certicate authentication, follow these steps then continue to the relevant section below:

AuthScheme: Set this to the AzureServicePrincipal in your app settings.
InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
AzureTenant: Set this to the tenant you wish to connect to.
OAuthClientId: Set this to the client Id in your app settings.

Authenticating using a Client Secret

Continue with the following:

OAuthClientId: Set this to the client Id in your app settings.
OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the client secret in your app settings.

Authenticating using a Certificate

Continue with the following:

OAuthJWTCert: Set this to the JWT Certificate store.
OAuthJWTCertType: Set this to the type of the certificate store specified by OAuthJWTCert.

MSI

If you are running Microsoft Excel Online on an Azure VM, you can leverage Managed Service Identity (MSI) credentials to connect:

AuthScheme: Set this to AzureMSI.

The MSI credentials are automatically obtained for authentication.

Executing SQL to Worksheet Data

See the following to execute data manipulation SQL to worksheets and ranges:

See Data Model for more information on how the driver models worksheets and cells as tables and columns.

Retrieving data from SharePoint Excel Files

To retrieve data from Sharepoint Excel files, set the SharepointURL connection property to the URL of your Sharepoint site. For example,

 SharepointURL=https://mysite.sharepoint.com/

The driver automatically looks up each document library you have in SharePoint and lists it as a schema. Individual Excel workbooks and worksheets are listed as tables in the format Workbook_Worksheet under their corresponding document library. This works in the same manner as listing your own personal Excel documents when SharepointURL is not set.

Refreshing OAuth Values

The driver can refresh the temporary OAuth access tokens obtained during the browser-based OAuth authentication exchange. By default, the driver saves the encrypted tokens in the odbc.ini file corresponding to the DSN. Access to this odbc.ini file can be restricted in the case of System DSNs.

To enable the automatic token exchange, you can give the driver write access to the system odbc.ini.

Installing Dependencies for OAuth Authentication

The OAuth authentication standard requires the authenticating user to interact with Microsoft Excel Online, using a web-browser. If the first OAuth interaction is to be done on the same machine the driver is installed on, for example, a desktop application, the driver needs access to the xdg-open program, which opens the default browser.

To satisfy this dependency, install the corresponding package with your package manager:


Debian/Ubuntu Package	RHEL/CentOS/Fedora Package	File
xdg-utils	xdg-utils	xdg-open

Set the Driver Encoding

The ODBC drivers need to specify which encoding to use with the ODBC Driver Manager. By default, the CData ODBC Drivers for Unix are configured to use UTF-16 which is compatible with unixODBC, but other Driver Managers may require alternative encoding.

Alternatively, if you are using the ODBC driver from an application that uses the ANSI ODBC API it may be necessary to set the ANSI code page. For example, to import Japanese characters in an ANSI application, you can specify the code page in the config file '/opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-excelonline/lib/cdata.odbc.excelonline.ini':

[Driver]
AnsiCodePage = 932

ODBC Driver for Microsoft Excel Online