Generating Database Connection Strings

This page provides guidance on creating SQL connection strings.

Azure MSSQL

Microsoft Azure connection strings take the following form:

mssql+pyodbc:///?odbc_connect=<quoted connection string>

The <quoted connection string> value is difficult to generate by hand as it requires escaping many characters. To generate a connection string for Azure databases, it is recommended to use the following Python code:

Generating a connection string
from urllib.parse import quote_plus # change these values to match your Azure database server = 'tcp:your-azure-server.database.windows.net' database = 'your-database-nametest' username = 'yourusername' password = '***' # these should not usually need to change driver = '{ODBC Driver 18 for SQL Server}' port = 1433 odbc_str = f'DRIVER={driver};SERVER={server};PORT={port};DATABASE={database};UID={username};PWD={password}' sqlalchemy_str = 'mssql+pyodbc:///?odbc_connect=' + quote_plus(odbc_str) print(sqlalchemy_str) # use this value in the data export tool # optionally test your connection from sqlalchemy import create_engine engine = create_engine(sqlalchemy_str) query = "select * from <table_name>" print(engine.execute(query).fetchall())