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Connect Using the SAP HANA ODBC Driver

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Connect Using the SAP HANA ODBC Driver
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Connect Using the SAP HANA ODBC Driver

Dan van Leeuwen
Dan van Leeuwen
November 23, 2021
Created by
Dan van Leeuwen
March 29, 2020
Beginner
15 min.
SAP HANA Cloud, SAP HANA, SAP HANA, express edition, Beginner, SAP HANA Cloud, SAP HANA database, Tutorial
Connect to SAP HANA using an ODBC data source.

You will learn

  • How to create and test an SAP HANA ODBC data source
  • How to use an ODBC data source in an application
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Prerequisites

  • You have completed the first 3 tutorials in this mission.

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) provides an API for accessing databases. Database vendors provide ODBC drivers for their database products. An application written to the ODBC standard can be ported to other databases that also provide an ODBC interface.

Step 1: Configure a data source using Microsoft Windows ODBC Data Source Administrator

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.

    start ODBC Administrator

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

    odbc admin 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.

    Add ODBC user data source

  5. Select HDBODBC and click Finish.

    New data source

  6. Example data source configuration for SAP HANA Cloud.

    ODBC HANA Cloud

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

    ODBC HXE

    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.

    Test Succeeded

    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.

Done
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Step 2: Configure a data source on Linux or Mac with unixODBC
View Full Instructions

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.

    YaST installer

    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. 

    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.

    odbcinst -j
which hdbsql
    odbcinst

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

    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.

    [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.

    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.

    SELECT * FROM HOTEL.CUSTOMER
    isql
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Step 3: Use a SAP HANA data source from another program

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.

Excel 64 bit

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.

    Excel ODBC

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

    Excel DSN

  4. Enter the credentials.

    Credential Screen

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

    Browse Schema

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

    Excel Show Data

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

    Excel ODBC Connection String

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.

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