Connect to an Oracle Database

This procedure describes the easiest method for connecting to an Oracle database. If you do not have the appropriate Oracle driver installed, Alteryx will prompt you to install it.

1. Click the Input Data Tool, or Output Data Tool in the tool palette and drag it to the workflow canvas area.
2. In Data sources > Oracle, select a data connection type.
3. Alteryx will check your system for an Oracle driver.
• If a driver for connecting to Oracle is already installed, you will see the Oracle Database Connection window. Proceed to the next step.
• If a driver is not already installed, you will see the Oracle Client Not Found window. Select an installation location and click Install to download and install the Oracle Instant Client driver. The installation location must have at least 2 GB of free space. For driver information, see Oracle.
4.  In Connection Name, type a new connection name or select an existing connection. New connections are stored in the Manage Data Connections.
Selecting an existing connection
• You can view and select any System connection or any User connection created by you.
• Data Source Name (DSN) connections configured in the ODBC driver are not listed. To configure ODBC and OLEDB connections, see ODBC and OLEDB Database Connections.
Modifying an existing connection
• When you select an existing connection, you can modify all connection properties except Type.
• If you are an administrator user, you can modify any System connection or any User connection created by you.
• If you are a non-administrator user, you can only modify User connections created by you.
• If you modify a connection property (for example, Host), you will need to re-enter your password.
5. Select a connection Type (new connections only):
   • User: Creates a connection that only you can use. User connections are visible only by the user who created them.
   • System: (Selectable only by administrator users) Creates a connection for any user on a machine. System connections are visible by all users.
6. In Host, type the Oracle database server host name or IP address.
7. Type the Port number for the Oracle database. The default value is 1521.
8. Type a Service Name, if desired. The service name defaults to the global database name if you leave this field blank.
9. Type your Credentials for the server. See Manual connection setup for more information on authentication requirements.
10. Click Test to test the connection.
11. Click OK.

If you are connecting to an Oracle database that contains Unicode® encoded data, select Force SQL WChar Support in the Input Data Tool Configuration window. Character columns are then treated as SQL_WCHAR, SQL_WVARCHAR, or SQL_WLONGVARCHAR.

Alternate Oracle connection methods