Connect Using the SAP HANA ODBC Driver

The ODBC Data Source Administrator lists the installed ODBC drivers and the configured data sources.

1. Open the administrator by entering ODBC after clicking on the Microsoft Windows start icon.

   Ensure that you choose the 64-bit version assuming that you have the 64-bit version of the SAP HANA client installed.

   

2. Click the Drivers tab and view the installed drivers.

   

   The SAP HANA ODBC driver (HDBODBC) is visible.

3. Click the User DSN tab to view the data sources.

4. Click Add to create a new data source to connect to a SAP HANA database.

   

5. Select HDBODBC and click Finish.

   

6. Example data source configuration for SAP HANA Cloud.

   

7. Example data source configuration for SAP HANA, express edition.

   

   To connect to SAP HANA, express edition, Multitenant should be checked and the Validate TLS/SSL certificate option can be unchecked. For more information on this topic, see How to Configure TLS/SSL in SAP HANA 2.0.

8. Click Test connection.

   

   The user name USER1 and password Password1 can be entered when prompted for credentials.

9. Press OK to save the data source.

   Note that the saved values can also be viewed using the Microsoft Windows registry editor under the key Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ODBC\ODBC.INI.

For additional details see Connect to SAP HANA via ODBC.

The following instructions demonstrate how unixODBC can be used to configure and test a data source on Linux or Mac.

1. On SUSE Linux, the YaST installer can be used to install unixODBC.

   

   For more details on how to accomplish this, please follow the second step of this tutorial.

2. On a Mac, unixODBC can be installed using Homebrew.

   Shell (Mac)

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   brew install unixodbc
   

3. The following commands can be used to confirm that unixODBC is installed, determine the location of the .odbc.ini file (if it exists), and to confirm the location of the SAP HANA client install that contains the ODBC driver.

   Shell (Linux or Mac)

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   odbcinst -j
   which hdbsql
   

   

4. Navigate to a directory, similar to the first one that is highlighted in the screenshot above.

   Shell (Linux or Mac)

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   cd $HOME
   

5. Edit the .odbc.ini file (or create it if it does not exist) to add one or more data sources. Be sure to configure the values of servernode and driver so that they conform with your setup.

   Note that the driver’s file extension is dylib instead of so on a Mac.

   .odbc.ini

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   [HANA_Cloud]
   servernode = 61964be8-39e8-4622-9a2b-ba3a38be2f75.hana.hanacloud.ondemand.com:443
   driver = /home/dan/sap/hdbclient/libodbcHDB.so
   encrypt = true
   sslValidateCertificate = true
   
   [HANA_Express]
   servernode = linux-bj70:39015
   driver = /home/dan/sap/hdbclient/libodbcHDB.so
   databasename = HXE
   

6. unixODBC provides a basic SQL query tool called isql that can be used to validate a data source.

   Shell (Linux or Mac)

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   isql -v HANA_Cloud User1 Password1
   

   Once you see a message that indicates a connection has been made, enter the following statement to verify this.

   Shell (Linux or Mac)

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   SELECT * FROM HOTEL.CUSTOMER
   

   

An application that supports ODBC can now make use of the created data source. One example on Windows is Microsoft Excel.

Note that Microsoft Excel can be 32 or 64 bit. This can be seen under File | Account | About Excel.

The SAP HANA client install can also be 32 or 64 bit. To connect, the versions of SAP HANA client and Microsoft Excel must match. If needed, the 32-bit installer for SAP HANA client is available from the SAP Software downloads site and can be installed into a separate directory such as C:\SAP\hdbclient32.

The following steps demonstrate how to use Microsoft Excel to query data in SAP HANA using the ODBC connector.

1. On Microsoft Windows, open Microsoft Excel.

2. In the Data tab, go to Get Data | From Other Sources | From ODBC.

   

3. Select the previously created data source that contains the connection information to an SAP HANA database.

   

4. Enter the credentials.

   

5. Select a schema and table, then press Load.

   

6. The selected data is now imported into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

   

7. One further option for some tools is to provide the connection details directly to an ODBC enabled application as shown below.

   

   For further information on programming an application to use the ODBC client driver, see ODBC Application Programming.

Congratulations! You have configured an ODBC data source to contain connection information for a SAP HANA database and used that data source from Microsoft Excel.