Connecting from a relational database
To study an example of connecting from a relational database, I am going to get data from a relational database that uses Structured Query Language (SQL). Although this might seem harder to do than any of the other things we've done thus far, it is very similar, and the hardest thing to do is type your password correctly for the authentication process.
There are different ways to connect to a SQL database; that is, either through Excel's Get & Transform tool or through Power BI.
We'll try each of these options in the following sections.
Connecting through Excel's Get & Transform tool
To connect to a SQL database, perform the following steps:
- Launch Excel.
- Click on the Data ribbon | Get Data | From Database | From SQL Server Database.
At this point, it is pertinent to say that there are huge numbers of databases that you can connect to, as well as to Azure directly, but you can...