Connecting to Exa

Authentication

Exa uses API key authentication to secure access to their neural search engine and web content retrieval services. Authentication is handled through the APIKey connection property.

Obtaining Your API Key

To get your API key:

1. Visit the Exa dashboard at https://dashboard.exa.ai
2. Register for an account or log in to your existing account
3. Navigate to the API settings section
4. Generate or copy your API key
5. Set the APIKey connection property with your API key value

Required Connection Properties

• APIKey: Your Exa API key obtained from the dashboard (required)

Available Tables

The Exa API Profile provides access to the following powerful search and content retrieval capabilities:

• Search - Execute semantic and keyword searches across the web using Exa's neural search technology. Supports advanced filtering by domain, category, publication date, and search type.
• Contents - Retrieve complete page content, AI-generated summaries, and comprehensive metadata for specific URLs or search result IDs.
• Answer - Generate AI-powered answers to questions using Exa's search results as context, providing accurate and source-backed responses.
• SimilarLinks - Discover web pages similar to a given URL using Exa's advanced similarity matching algorithms.
• AgentRuns - Create, access, and monitor agent runs created through Exa's Agent API for complex, multi-step information gathering workflows. Supports INSERT to create new agent runs and DELETE to remove stored agent runs.

Connection Examples

Basic Connection String

Profile=C:\profiles\Exa.apip;APIKey=your_exa_api_key_here;

Alternative Connection String Format

Profile=C:\profiles\Exa.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_exa_api_key_here';

Usage Examples

Search Operations

Basic semantic search:

SELECT * FROM Search WHERE Query = 'artificial intelligence trends 2024'

Advanced search with filters:

SELECT * FROM Search
WHERE Query = 'machine learning research'
  AND NumResults = 50
  AND SearchType = 'neural'
  AND SearchCategory = 'research paper'
  AND StartPublishedDate = '2024-01-01'

Deep research search with reasoning:

SELECT * FROM Search
WHERE Query = 'Compare the 2026 pricing models of the major vector database vendors'
  AND SearchType = 'deep-reasoning'
  AND NumResults = 10

Content Retrieval

Get full content for specific URLs:

SELECT * FROM Contents
WHERE Url = 'https://example.com,https://research-site.com'
  AND IncludeText = true

AI-Powered Answers

Generate answers with source citations:

SELECT Answer, Citations FROM Answer
WHERE Query = 'What are the latest developments in quantum computing?'

Similar Content Discovery

Find similar pages:

SELECT * FROM SimilarLinks
WHERE Url = 'https://example.com/article'
  AND NumResults = 20
  AND IncludeDomains = 'research.google.com'

Agent Run Management

List all agent runs:

SELECT Id, Status, RequestQuery FROM AgentRuns

Retrieve the output of a completed agent run:

SELECT Status, Output, CostDollars FROM AgentRuns WHERE Id = 'agent_run_01j...'

Create a new agent run:

INSERT INTO AgentRuns (RequestQuery) VALUES ('Summarize the latest developments in AI safety research')

Create an agent run with all available options:

INSERT INTO AgentRuns (RequestQuery, RequestEffort, RequestSystemPrompt, RequestPreviousRunId, RequestInput, RequestDataSources, RequestMetadata, RequestBudget, RequestOutputSchema)
VALUES ('What are the most important AI infrastructure funding rounds announced this week?', 'auto', 'Return concise results with sources.', 'agent_run_90266e44610f47bfbbaffa4378fab1d1',
  '{"data":[{"company":"OpenAI"}],"exclusion":[{"company":"Anthropic"}]}', '[{"provider":"similarweb"},{"provider":"financialdatasets"}]', '{"request_id":"abc123","team":"research","environment":"test"}',
  '{"maxCostDollars":10}', '{"type":"object","properties":{"results":{"type":"array"}}}')

Delete a stored agent run:

DELETE FROM AgentRuns WHERE Id = 'agent_run_01j...'

Important Notes

• Exa retired the /research endpoint, so the ResearchTasks table has been removed. Use AgentRuns for multi-step research workflows, or query the Search table with SearchType = 'deep-reasoning' for single-shot research answers.
• Exa API usage is subject to rate limits and costs based on your subscription plan. Monitor your usage through the Exa dashboard. The Search and Contents tables include cost information in the response data to help track API usage costs.

Connection Properties

The connection string properties are the various options that can be used to establish a connection. This section provides a complete list of the options you can configure in the connection string for this provider.

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Property	Description
APIKey	The API Key from your Exa account.
AuthScheme	The scheme used for authentication. Accepted entry is APIKey. Allowed values are: BASIC, NONE, NTLM, OAUTH, APIKEY, OAUTH_CLIENT, OAUTH_PASSWORD