exasol-driver-lua

August 28, 2026 · View on GitHub

The Exasol Driver for Lua (EDL) allows you to execute queries on an Exasol database and retrieve the results. This user-guide shows how to use the driver.

Installing the Driver and Dependencies

Install Runtime Dependencies

This project has the following prerequisites:

  • Lua ≥ 5.4
  • Luarocks ≥ 3.8: Package manager for Lua
  • OpenSSL ≥ 1.1: Library used for TLS connections and RSA encryption

Install the prerequisites like this:

  • macOS: 
    brew install lua luarocks openssl@1.1
  • Fedora: Installing luaossl via luarocks fails on Fedora 35 with a compile error. That's why we install lua-luaossl via yum: 
    sudo yum install lua lua-devel luarocks openssl-devel lua-luaossl

Install exasol-driver-lua

We recommend installing Lua dependencies to your local luarocks directory, usually $HOME/.luarocks. To setup the Lua search path, run this command in every shell or add it to an init script:

eval $(luarocks path)

Then install exasol-driver-lua and required Lua libraries by running

luarocks install --local luasql-exasol

On macOS you may need to specify the path to OpenSSL:

openssl=/usr/local/Cellar/openssl@1.1/1.1.1m/
luarocks install --local luasql-exasol OPENSSL_DIR=$openssl CRYPTO_DIR=$openssl

Executable Example

This repository contains examples.lua as an example of how to use exasol-driver-lua.

After installing exasol-driver-lua, you can run the example script like this:

EXASOL_HOST=<host> \
  EXASOL_PORT=8563 \
  EXASOL_USER=<DB-user> \
  EXASOL_PASSSWORD=<DB-Password> \
  lua doc/user_guide/examples.lua

You will need to adjust host, port and credentials. If everything is set up correctly, the script will log the following:

2022-04-27 18:07:09 (038.649ms) [INFO]   Successfully connected to Exasol database at 192.168.56.7:8563 with user sys
2022-04-27 18:07:09 (067.318ms) [INFO]   Successfully executed query
2022-04-27 18:07:09 (067.354ms) [INFO]   Dice roll result: 6
2022-04-27 18:07:09 (067.362ms) [INFO]   Cursor closed successfully
2022-04-27 18:07:09 (067.368ms) [INFO]   Reading EXA_METADATA
2022-04-27 18:07:09 (078.316ms) [INFO]     - row 1: maxBinaryLiteralLength = '0'
2022-04-27 18:07:09 (078.344ms) [INFO]     - row 2: maxCatalogNameLength = '128'
2022-04-27 18:07:09 (078.352ms) [INFO]     - row 3: maxCharLiteralLength = '2000000'
2022-04-27 18:07:09 (078.359ms) [INFO]     - row 4: maxColumnNameLength = '128'
2022-04-27 18:07:09 (078.374ms) [INFO]     - row 5: maxColumnsInGroupBy = '0'
2022-04-27 18:07:09 (078.499ms) [INFO]   Connection closed successfully
2022-04-27 18:07:09 (078.513ms) [INFO]   Environment closed successfully

Usage

exasol-driver-lua follows the API of LuaSQL, so the LuaSQL manual is a good starting point.

The following describes the basic usage. See the API documentation for a detailed description of each method.

Configure Logging

The driver uses remotelog for logging, so you can configure the log level like this:

local log = require("remotelog")
log.set_level("INFO")

See remotelog's user guide for details.

Creating an Environment

The environment allows you to create database connections:

-- Import the library
local driver = require("luasql.exasol")
-- Create a new environment
local environment = driver.exasol()

-- Use the environment to create database connections...

Creating a Connection

You can create a database connection using the environment:

-- Create a new connection with default properties
local connection, err = environment:connect("<hostname>:8563", "<username>", "<password>")

-- Create a new connection with custom properties
local properties = {tls_verify = "none", tls_protocol = "tlsv1_2", tls_options = "no_tlsv1"}
local connection, err = environment:connect("<hostname>:8563", "<username>", "<password>", properties)

if err ~= nil then
  -- Handle connection error
end

The connect() method expects four arguments:

  1. The source name consists of hostname or IP address of the database and the port.
  2. The name of the database user.
  3. The password of the database user.
  4. An optional table with connection properties, see below for details.

The connect() returns two results:

  1. The connection object if the connection was established successfully or nil in case of an error
  2. An error in case the operation failed.

Connection Properties

When creating a new connection you can specify the following properties:

  • tls_verify specifies how the database's TLS certificate should be verified. Possible values are:
    • none (default)
    • peer
    • client_once
    • fail_if_no_peer_cert
  • tls_protocol specifies the TLS protocol for connecting to the database. Possible values are:
    • tlsv1
    • tlsv1_1
    • tlsv1_2 (default)
    • tlsv1_3
  • tls_options specifies additional options for OpenSSL, e.g. no_tlsv1. The default value is all. You can get a complete list of supported options by executing the following Lua code: 
    require("ssl").config.options
  • fingerprint optionally pins the TLS peer certificate
TLS Certificate Fingerprint Pinning

Clients of TLS connections need to verify the authenticity of the server they communicate with. Usually, that is done via certificate validation through signatures. Where this is not available, fingerprint pinning is a less elegant variant.

You can optionally set the 64-digit hexadecimal fingerprint that the client expects. If it does not match the fingerprint of the server's TLS certificate, the driver closes the connection.

The letters in the fingerprint are case-insensitive.

The fingerprint itself is the SHA-256 hash of the certificate's binary DER encoding.

Executing SQL Statements and Queries

You can execute SQL statements and queries using a connection:

local cursor, err = connection:execute("<statement>")
if err ~= nil then
  -- Handle query error
end

The execute() method returns two results:

  1. A cursor object if there are results (e.g. for a SELECT query), or the number of rows affected by the command (e.g. for an UPDATE statement).
  2. An error in case the operation failed.

Reading the Query Result From a Cursor

The fetch() method returns the next row. If there are no more rows it returns nil and closes the cursor.

fetch() supports two modes for the result format:

  • Numeric indices (default, option "n"): the row table is a list with numeric indices.
  • Alphanumeric indices (option "a"): the row table is a map using column names as indices.

Reading a Single Row

This reads the first row using numeric indices.

-- Execute an SQL query to get a cursor
local cursor = ...

-- Get the first row:
local first_row = cursor:fetch()
-- Get column values from the first row (index starts with 1):
local first_col = first_row[1]
local second_col = first_row[2]

-- Close cursor
if not cursor:close() then
    -- Handle error
end

Iterating Over All Rows

This reads all rows using alphanumeric indices with fetch(row, "a").

-- Define reusable table for storing row data
local row = {}

-- Fetch first row
row = cursor:fetch(row, "a")

-- Iterate over rows
while row ~= nil do
    -- Process row...
    local col1 = row["COLUMN_1"]
    -- Fetch next row
    row = cursor:fetch(row, "a")
end

To reduce memory usage you can optionally pass a table as first argument to fetch(). This avoids creating new tables for each row.

When there are no more rows, fetch() returns nil and automatically closes the cursor.

Closing a Connection

connection:close()

Close the connection after you have closed all cursors created with it. The close() method will return false if not all cursors where closed or if the connection is already closed.

Closing an Environment

environment:close()

Close the environment after you have closed all connections created with it. The close() method will return false if not all connections where closed or if the environment is already closed.

Using exasol-driver-lua in an Exasol UDF

Exasol allows running Lua code in user defined functions (UDF). The exasol-driver-lua uses only dependencies that are available to UDFs or that can be included into a package using amalgamation. This makes it possible to also use it in an Exasol UDF, for example for accessing another Exasol database.

To build such a package follow these steps:

  1. Install exasol-driver-lua as described here.

  2. Install amalg:

    luarocks --local install amalg

  3. Create a Lua script udf.lua for your UDF that uses the exasol driver, e.g.

    local driver = require("luasql.exasol")
function run(ctx)
    return "Loaded driver: "..tostring(driver)
end

  4. Run the following command to build the package:

    amalg.lua --fallback --script=udf.lua --output udf-amalg.lua \
  luasql.exasol luasql.exasol.CursorData luasql.exasol.Environment \
  luasql.exasol.Websocket luasql.exasol.WebsocketDatahandler \
  luasql.exasol.Cursor luasql.exasol.util \
  luasql.exasol.constants luasql.exasol.Connection \
  luasql.exasol.ExasolWebsocket luasql.exasol.ConnectionProperties \
  luasql.exasol.luws luasql.exasol.base64 \
  remotelog ExaError MessageExpander

    This command bundles all required modules of the driver as well as the third party modules remotelog ExaError MessageExpander to a single Lua file, using udf.lua as entry point.

    Note: Do not add argument --debug because this will generate code that won't run in a UDF.

  5. Run the following statement in your Exasol database to create the UDF:

    --/
CREATE OR REPLACE LUA SCALAR SCRIPT UDF_SCHEMA.RUN_UDF_TEST(argument VARCHAR(2000)) RETURNS VARCHAR(2000) AS
    -- Insert content of udf-amalg.lua here
/;

  6. Execute the UDF by running this statement:

    SELECT UDF_SCHEMA.RUN_UDF_TEST('argument')

See files amalg_util.lua and udf_spec.lua as an example how to automate this process.

Compatibility

EDL is tested with the following Exasol versions:

EDL versionExasol versionNote
0.2.07.1.10
0.2.17.1.17
0.2.18.18.1supports TLS 1.3 and running EDL as UDF
1.0.0Latest 8, Latest LTS, Latest overalladd fingerprint pinning