ADO.NET Data Provider

Exasol provides an ADO.NET Data Provider to connect .NET application to Exasol. The Exasol ADO.NET data provider supports the ADO.NET 4.0 standard.

The data provider is tested with the following applications:

  • SQL Server Integration Services: SQL Server Integration Services are supported for Visual Studio and later versions. The SQL Server Integration Services work with the generic ADO.NET and ODBC drivers and don't need any extensions to be installed.

  • SQL Server Reporting Services (Data Processing Extension) and SQL Server Analysis Services (DDEX provider and pluggable SQL cartridge) are installed for:

The DDEX provider for SQL Server Analysis Services in Visual Studio 2017 and 2019 (v 14.0 and 15.0) are installed in the EXAExtension.vsix. This is installed by the Exasol ADO.NET setup.
You have to close all Visual Studio instances before the extension is installed.

System Requirements

  • You should have system administrator rights for the system where you are installing the data provider.
  • Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1™ should be installed on your system.

The data driver is tested on the following operating systems:

Download and Install the ADO.NET Data Provider

  1. Go to the Exasol Downloads page and from Download ADO.NET Driver section, download the ADO.NET driver.
  2. Run the executable file downloaded.
  3. Follow the setup wizard to complete the installation process.

The data provider is installed in the global assembly cache and registered in the global configuration file of the .NET framework.

An additional tool Data Provider Metadata View ™(DPMV) is also installed besides the ADO.NET driver. You can use it to check the connectivity and run simple metadata queries.

Using the Data Provider

To use the data provider, do the following:

  1. Select the data provider by doing one of the following:
    • Select the entry Exasol Data Provider from the list of installed data providers.
    • Enter an invariant identifier that selects the Data Provider. The identifier for Exasol data provider is Exasol.EXADataProvider.
  2. Connect to Exasol using a connection string with all the required information. The connection string is a sequence of keyword and value pairs separated by semicolons. For example, host=192.168.6.11..14:8563;UID=sys;PWD=exasol;Schema=test.

Exasol Data Provider supports the following keywords.

Keyword Description
server or host

Defines the servers and the port of the Exasol cluster (for example, 192.168.6.11..14:8563). If host names are specified there, they can have DNS entries with multiple IP addresses.

port

Port of Exasol. This port is used if you did not specify any port within the parameter host.

user id, username, or uid

Username

password or pwd Password
schema

Schema to be opened on login.

autocommit

Settings for autocommit: ON or OFF.

Default value is ON.

encryption

Settings for the automatic encryption: ON or OFF.

Default value is ON.

logfile

Log file for the driver (for example, logfile='C:\tmp\ado.log'). The size of this log file can get huge, we recommend to switch on this option only to analyze problems.

onconnect

SQL string which is executed directly after the connection is established. If an error occurs, the connection will be aborted.

connecttimeout

Maximum time in milliseconds the driver will wait to establish a TPC connection to a server. This timeout is required to limit the overall login time especially in case of a large cluster with several reserve nodes.

Default value is 2000

querytimeout

Defines how many seconds a statement may run before it is automatically aborted.

Default value is 0 (unlimited)

superconnection

Enables the user to execute queries even if the limit for active sessions (executing a query) has been reached. The allowed values are ON and OFF.

Default value is OFF

Only the SYS user can set the parameter.

superconnection should only be used in case of significant performance problems where it is impossible to log in and execute queries within a reasonable time. By that parameter you can analyze the system and kill certain processes which cause the problem.

feedbackinterval

During a query the server sends feedback to the client at set intervals. This feedback:

  • Signals that the server is still there and executing the client command

  • Prevents the connection from being cut by the networks for inactivity

  • Checks whether a command is canceled

Default value is one second.

A feedback interval set too high may cause a long lag time before a command is canceled.

An example for Exasol Data Provider (written in C#) is given below.


using System;
using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text;
using System.Data.Common;

namespace ConnectionTest
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            DbProviderFactory factory=null; try
            {
                factory = DbProviderFactories.GetFactory("Exasol.EXADataProvider"); 
                Console.WriteLine("Found Exasol driver");

                DbConnection connection = factory.CreateConnection(); 
                connection.ConnectionString =
                "Server=192.168.6.11..14;Port=8563;UID=sys;PWD=exasol;Schema=sys";

                connection.Open(); 
                Console.WriteLine("Connected to server"); 
                DbCommand cmd = connection.CreateCommand(); 
                cmd.Connection = connection; 
                cmd.CommandText = "SELECT * FROM CAT";

                DbDataReader reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();

                Console.WriteLine("Schema SYS contains:"); 
                while (reader.Read())
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("{0}, {1}"
                    reader["TABLE_NAME"], 
                    reader["TABLE_TYPE"]);
                }

                reader.Close(); 
                connection.Close();
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString());
            }
        }
    }
}

If the example is successfully executed, following output is displayed.

Found Exasol driver 
Connected to server 
Schema SYS contains: 
EXA_SQL_KEYWORDS, TABLE 
DUAL, TABLE 
EXA_PARAMETERS, TABLE
...

Schema Collections

Exasol ADO.NET driver supports the following Schema Collections:

  • MetaDataCollections
  • DataSourceInformation
  • DataTypes
  • Restrictions
  • ReservedWords
  • Tables
  • Columns
  • Procedures
  • ProcedureColumns
  • Views
  • Schemas

Best Practices

Objective Details
Inserting data into the database

Instead of using single insert statements like "INSERT INTO t VALUES 1, 2, ..." you should use more efficient interface of prepared statements and their parameters. Prepared statements achieve optimal performance when using parameter sets between 500 kB and 20 MB. Moreover you should insert the data by using the native data types.

For execution of prepared statements we recommend using the IParameterTable interface. You can create an instance of ParameterTable with a "Command" through CreateParameterTable() method.

Block-wise update by using prepared statements

Exasol ADO.NET provides a special interface to execute prepared statements (class ParameterTable) since it is not possible to update rows in Exasol through the ADO.NET specific interfaces DataSet and DataAdapter.

Executing parametrized queries is done by using SQL statements including question marks at the position of parameters. The values of the ParameterTable are used to replace the parameters when executing the statement.

Example for a parametrized query is given below:

using (EXACommand command = (EXACommand)connection.CreateCommand())
{
   command.CommandText = "CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE TEST (I INT, TS TIMESTAMP)";
   command.ExecuteNonQuery();
   command.CommandText = "INSERT INTO TEST VALUES (?, ?)"; command.Prepare();
   IParameterTable tab = command.CreateParameterTable(); tab.AddColumn(DbType.Int32); tab.AddColumn(DbType.String);
   for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
   {
     int currentRow = tab.AppendRow(); 
     tab[0].setInt32(currentRow, i); 
     tab[1].setString(currentRow, "2017-06-30 11:21:13." + i);
   }
   command.Execute(tab);
}

Note: The two options to specify the decimal types are:

  • AddColumn(DbType.Decimal): When using this general method, the internal type DECIMAL(36,8) is used.
  • AddDecimalColumn(p,s): When using this specific method, the internal type DECIMAL(p,s) is used (36 digits as maximum) .
Decimal types The ADO.NET DECIMAL data type can only store values with a precision of a maximum of 28 digits. Decimal columns in Exasol with greater precision do not fit in these data types and have to be provided as strings.
Column names Consider the case when using identifiers.
Batch execution

If you want to execute several statements in a batch, you can use the functions AddBatchCommandText() and ExecuteBatch() of the class EXACommand.

Example for a batch execution is given below.


using (EXACommand cmd = (EXACommand)connection.CreateCommand())
{
   cmd.AddBatchCommandText("CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE TEST (I INT)"); 
   cmd.AddBatchCommandText("INSERT INTO TEST VALUES (1)"); 
   cmd.AddBatchCommandText("SELECT * FROM TEST");
   DbDataReader reader = cmd.ExecuteBatch(); 
   do
   {
    if (reader.RecordsAffected>0)
        Console.Out.WriteLine("Records affected: " + reader.RecordsAffected);
   } while (reader.NextResult());
}

Exasol Data Processing Extension

The EXADataProcessingExtension implements interfaces for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services to create reports with Exasol. In the following example Visual Studio 2005 is used to create a report for the Reporting Services:

  1. Start Visual Studio 2005 and create a new report server project.
  2. Open the Project sheet explorer.
  3. Create a new data source (EXADataSource) and insert the connection string, user, and passwords.

    Exasol Data Processing Extension

  1. In the Project sheet explorer, add a new report using the wizard. When selecting the data source, choose the ExaDataSource that was previously configured.
  2. Publish the report as soon as it is ready. The functions are contained in Create menu.
  3. Do the following to open the report in your browser:
    1. Open a browser.
    2. Enter the address of the report server. For example, http://localhost/Reports

    Check with your system administrator if you don't have permission to run the reports on the server.

Here is an output of the report in browser.

Exasol Data Processing Extension