Excel Online Ingestion Source
See the Connector Marketplace topic. Please request your administrator to start a trial or subscribe to the Premium Excel Online connector.
In Gathr, it can be added as a channel to help in fetching customers’ and prospects’ data and transform it as needed before storing it in a desired data warehouse to run further analytics.
Data Source Configuration
Configure the data source parameters as explained below.
Fetch From Source/Upload Data File
To design the application, you can either fetch the sample data from the Excel Online source by providing the data source connection details or upload a sample data file in one of the supported formats to see the schema details during the application design phase.
Upload Data File
To design the application, please upload a data file containing sample records in a format supported by Gathr.
The sample data provided for application design should match the data source schema from which data will be fetched during runtime.
If Upload Data File method is selected to design the application, provide the below details.
File Format
Select the format of the sample file depending on the file type.
Gathr-supported file formats for Excel Online data sources are CSV, JSON, TEXT, Parquet and ORC.
For CSV file format, select its corresponding delimiter.
Header Included
Enable this option to read the first row as a header if your Excel Online sample data file is in CSV format.
Upload
Please upload the sample file as per the file format selected above.
Fetch From Source
If Fetch From Source method is selected to design the application, then the data source connection details will be used to get sample data.
Continue to configure the data source.
Connection Name
Connections are the service identifiers. A connection name can be selected from the list if you have created and saved connection details for Excel Online earlier. Or create one as explained in the topic - Excel Online Connection →
Use the Test Connection option to ensure that the connection with the Excel Online channel is established successfully.
A success message states that the connection is available. In case of any error in test connection, edit the connection to resolve the issue before proceeding further.
Entity
Tables in Excel Online are statically defined to model Excel Online entities.
If you selected the Fetch From Source method to design the application, the Entities will list as per the configured connection. Select the entity to be read from Excel Online.
If you selected the Upload Data File method to design the application, the exact name of the entity should be provided to read the data from Excel Online.
If you selected the Fetch From Source method to design the application, the Fields would list as per the Entity chosen in the previous configuration parameter. Select the fields or provide a custom query to read the desired records from Excel Online.
Fields
The conditions to fetch source data from a Excel Online table can be specified using this option.
Select Fields: Select the column(s) of the entity that should be read.
Custom Query: Provide an SQL query specifying the read conditions for the source data.
Example: SELECT "Id" FROM Companies
If you selected the Upload Data File method to design the application, provide a custom query to fetch records from the Excel Online entity specified in the previous configuration.
Query
The conditions to fetch source data from a Excel Online table can be specified using this option.
Provide an SQL query specifying the read conditions for the source data.
Example: SELECT "Id" FROM Companies
Read Options
This section contains additional read options that can be configured on need basis.
Allow Formula
Whether or not to treat values starting with an equals (=) sign as formulas during inserts and updates.
Set to true to treat values beginning with an equals (=) sign as formulas on inserts and updates.
Set to false to treat all values used in inserts and updates as strings.
Example:
With Allow Formula set to true, the following will insert a formula into the B column that will sum cells B1:B5:
INSERT INTO Excel_Sheet (A, B) VALUES ('Bill', '=SUM(B1:B5)')
Header
Indicates whether or not the provider should detect column names from the first row.
If true, the first row will be used as a column header. Otherwise, the pseudo column names A, B, C, etc. will be used.
The connector will follow the additional specifications below to detect column headers:
Headers should not contain special characters.
Due to a limitation of the Excel Online API, all column headers must be nonempty.
Show Shared Documents
Whether or not to show shared documents.
If set to true, shared documents will be listed along-side user owned workbooks as database tables.
Ultimately, the specific files should have been granted direct access or explicitly shared with the authenticated user.
Use Simple Names
Boolean determining if simple names should be used for tables and columns.
Microsoft Excel Online tables and columns can use special characters in names that are normally not allowed in standard databases. Use Simple Names makes the connector easier to use with traditional database tools.
Setting this to true will simplify the names of tables and columns returned.
It will enforce a naming scheme such that only alphanumeric characters and the underscore are valid for the displayed table and column names. Any nonalphanumeric characters will be converted to an underscore.
Value Input Option
Determines how to parse the values submitted by the user to Microsoft Excel Online.
Possible Values:
Raw: The values the user has entered will not be parsed and will be stored as-is.
UserEntered: The values will be parsed as if the user typed them into the UI. Numbers will stay as numbers, but strings may be converted to numbers, dates, etc., following the same rules that are applied when entering text into a cell via the Excel Online UI.
Value Render Option
Determines how the provider renders values in the output.
Possible Values:
FormattedValue: Values will be calculated and formatted in the reply according to the cell’s formatting. Formatting is based on the workbook’s locale, not the requesting user’s locale.
Example: if A1 is 1.23 and A2 is “=A1” and formatted as currency, then A2 would return “$1.23”.
UnformattedValue: Values will be calculated but not formatted in the reply.
Example: if A1 is 1.23 and A2 is “=A1” and formatted as currency, then A2 would return the number 1.23.
Formula: Values will not be calculated and instead the reply will include the formulas.
Example: if A1 is 1.23 and A2 is “=A1” and formatted as currency, then A2 would return “=A1”.
Use Pagination
Whether or not the ADO.NET Provider for Microsoft Excel Online should use client side paging.
You can set this to true in case of a large dataset.
Pagesize
The maximum number of results to return per page from Microsoft Excel Online.
Setting a higher value may result in better performance at the cost of additional memory eaten up per page consumed.
A value of -1 indicates the maximum possible page size for the connector.
Partitioning
This section contains partitioning-related configuration parameters.
Enable Partitioning
This enables parallel reading of the data from the entity.
Partitioning is disabled by default.
If enabled, an additional option will appear to configure the partitioning conditions.
Column
The selected column will be used to partition the data.
Max Rows per Partition: Enter the maximum number of rows to be read in a single request.
Example: 10,000
It implies that a maximum number of 10,000 rows can be read in one partition.
Advanced Configuration
This section contains additional configuration parameters.
Fetch Size
The number of rows to be fetched per round trip. The default value is 1000.
Add Configuration: Additional properties can be added using this option as key-value pairs.
Schema
Check the populated schema details. For more details, see Schema Preview →
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