Querying Excel file in Report Builder 3.0

Question

I set up an ODBC connection in Report Builder 3.0, connected to my Excel sheet as my data source, and I can set up a data set that queries one sheet at a time fine. But can I join two sheets in a data set query? I always get "Syntax error in FROM
clause." I thought I could use basic SQL syntax in the query and it would be fine. Is there a certain syntax or trick, or can this just not be done?

Answer 1

Hi (datasci),
You can create a linked server in SSMS, then create a procedure to join three sheets. Then you can call the procedure in a dataset.
As we tested in our environment, we create a linked server and the procedure like below:
--linked server
EXEC sp_addlinkedserver
@server = 'ExcelServer',
@srvproduct = 'Excel',
@provider = 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0',
@datasrc = 'c:\Book3.xls.xlsx', -- the path in the server where SQL server locates
@provstr = 'Excel 12.0;IMEX=1;HDR=YES;'
EXEC sp_addlinkedsrvlogin 'ExcelServer', 'false'--, 'sa', 'Admin', null
go
--procedure
CREATE PROC proce2
as
SELECT a.Name,a.Amount,b.PtNo,b.value,c.Gender
FROM ExcelServer...[Sheet1$] as a
left join ExcelServer...[Sheet2$] as b on a.Name =b.Name
left join ExcelServer...[Sheet3$] as c on c.PtNo =b.PtNo
Then we call the procedure in the dataset, we get the expected result:
If you have any question, please feel free to ask.
Best regards,
Qiuyun Yu
Qiuyun Yu
TechNet Community Support