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The CSV ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live flat-file delimited data (CSV/TSV files), directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access flat-file data like you would any standard database - read, write, and update etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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Replicate CSV Data from PowerShell


Write a quick PowerShell script to query CSV data. Use connectivity to the live data to replicate CSV data to SQL Server.



The CData ODBC Driver for CSV enables out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft's built-in support for ODBC. The ODBC driver instantly integrates connectivity to the real CSV data with PowerShell.

You can use the .NET Framework Provider for ODBC built into PowerShell to quickly automate integration tasks like replicating CSV data to other databases. This article shows how to replicate CSV data to SQL Server in 5 lines of code.

You can also write PowerShell code to download CSV data. See the examples below.

Create an ODBC Data Source for CSV

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

The DataSource property must be set to a valid local folder name.

Also, specify the IncludeFiles property to work with text files having extensions that differ from .csv, .tab, or .txt. Specify multiple file extensions in a comma-separated list. You can also set Extended Properties compatible with the Microsoft Jet OLE DB 4.0 driver. Alternatively, you can provide the format of text files in a Schema.ini file.

Set UseRowNumbers to true if you are deleting or updating in CSV. This will create a new column with the name RowNumber which will be used as key for that table.

Connect to CSV

The code below shows how to use the DSN to initialize the connection to CSV data in PowerShell:

$conn = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcConnection $conn.ConnectionString = "DSN=CData CSV Source x64"

Back Up CSV Data to SQL Server

After you enable caching, you can use the code below to replicate data to SQL Server.

Set the following connection properties to configure the caching database:

  • CacheProvider: The name of the ADO.NET provider. This can be found in the Machine.config for your version of .NET. For example, to configure SQL Server, enter System.Data.SqlClient.

  • CacheConnection: The connection string of properties required to connect to the database. Below is an example for SQL Server:

    Server=localhost;Database=RSB;User Id=sqltest;Password=sqltest;

The SQL query in the example can be used to refresh the entire cached table, including its schema. Any already existing cache is deleted.

$conn.Open() # Create and execute the SQL Query $SQL = "CACHE DROP EXISTING SELECT * FROM " + $Customer $cmd = New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcCommand($sql,$conn) $count = $cmd.ExecuteNonQuery() $conn.Close()

The driver gives you complete control over the caching functionality. See the help documentation for more caching commands and usage examples. See the help documentation for steps to replicate to other databases.

Other Operations

To retrieve CSV data in PowerShell, call the Fill method of the OdbcDataAdapter method. To execute data manipulation commands, initialize the OdbcCommand object and then call ExecuteNonQuery. Below are some more examples commands to CSV through the .NET Framework Provider for ODBC:

Retrieve CSV Data

$sql="SELECT City, TotalDue from Customer" $da= New-Object System.Data.Odbc.OdbcDataAdapter($sql, $conn) $dt= New-Object System.Data.DataTable $da.Fill($dt) $dt.Rows | foreach { $dt.Columns | foreach ($col in dt{ Write-Host $1[$_] } }