How to connect an Azure SQL server using Python

Setup the environment

You will need to follow the steps below before connecting to Azure SQL Server using Python.

Download and install the ODBC Driver for SQL Serverhttps://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/connect/odbc/download-odbc-driver-for-sql-server?view=sql-server-ver15.
Install the package pyodbc by running the command:
```
pip install pyodbc
```

Connect to SQL server

Now, we are ready to connect to SQL Server using Python. Take a look at the code below.

import pyodbc 
server = 'tcp:myserver.database.windows.net' 
database = 'mydb'
username = 'myusername' 
password = 'mypassword'
driver = '{ODBC Driver 17 for SQL Server}'
try:
    cnxn = pyodbc.connect('DRIVER=' + driver + 
                      ';SERVER=' + server + 
                      ';DATABASE=' + database + 
                      ';UID=' + username + 
                      ';PWD=' + password)
    cursor = cnxn.cursor()
    print('Connection established')
except:
    print('Cannot connect to SQL server')

Explanation:

In line 1, we import the required package.
In line 3, we define the SQL server URL.
In line 4, we specify the SQL Server database name to which we want to connect.
In line 5, we define the username for accessing the database.
In line 6, we define the password for accessing the database.
In line 7, we define the SQL server driver.
In line 10, we use the connect() method and pass all the parameters that we have defined in the above steps.
In line 16, we get the cursor object if the connection is successful. This cursor object can then be used for performing all the database operations.
If there is an error while connecting to the server, in line 19, we can print a message stating that the connection was not established.

Use try-except blocks to avoid any program crashes.

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