Connect DigitalOcean Managed Databases to Excel, Sheets and AI

Direct or pooled, told apart by the port

DigitalOcean puts connection pools on a different port of the same host, which makes the distinction unusually clean — there is no separate hostname to get wrong.

• Port 25060 is the database itself. Port 25061 is a connection pool, running PgBouncer in transaction mode by default.
• Paste either string and the mode follows the port automatically; you are not asked to know which one you copied.
• Choosing pooled with any other port, or direct on 25061, is rejected in the form with the reason rather than failing later as a timeout.
• For PostgreSQL pools the agent also adapts: it pins prepared statements off, because transaction-mode pooling can hand your next statement to a different backend and a named prepared statement will not be there.

PostgreSQL and MySQL are not treated identically

Both engines are on the one card, but the agent has specific handling for one of them and generic handling for the other. It is worth being straight about which is which.

• DigitalOcean requires TLS for managed databases at its end, whichever engine you use — that is the platform's rule and it applies to both.
• For PostgreSQL the agent additionally requires TLS itself for every .db.ondigitalocean.com host, so a string that lost its sslmode parameter in the clipboard still connects encrypted.
• For MySQL the Use SSL checkbox is what carries it. It is on by default and should stay on; there is no second belt behind that brace.
• The prepared-statement handling on port 25061 is likewise PostgreSQL-specific. A MySQL connection through a pool is a plain connection through a pool.

The password is in the string, and only there

This trips people up on DigitalOcean more than on any other provider, so the card is built around it.

• The control panel shows the password inside the connection string and nowhere else. Pasting the string is the path of least resistance; retyping it from memory is not an option.
• The paste box accepts postgresql:// and mysql:// and rejects anything else with a message telling you where the right one lives.
• A password carrying leading or trailing whitespace is flagged, because it is a common copy artifact and it fails as an unhelpful authentication error.
• doadmin and defaultdb are prefilled because that is what a new cluster ships with — both are yours to change, and a read-only user is the better habit.

-- Read-only, direct or through the pool, same statement
SELECT   c.name,
         COUNT(o.id)   AS orders,
         SUM(o.amount) AS revenue
FROM     customers AS c
JOIN     orders    AS o ON o.customer_id = c.id
GROUP BY c.name
ORDER BY revenue DESC;