Connect Google Cloud SQL to Excel, Sheets and AI

Private IP is the recommended path, and it is the easy one

Cloud SQL connectivity is usually the hard part of getting this data anywhere. It stops being hard when the thing doing the reading is already inside the VPC.

• The agent makes outbound connections only, so putting it on a VM in your VPC needs no ingress rule of any kind.
• The instance keeps no public IP, and the authorized networks list stays empty — nothing to update when an office address changes.
• Because there is no hostname to point at, Cloud SQL is addressed by IP. That is a property of the service rather than a limitation here.
• A public IP still works if that is your existing arrangement. The agent does not mind which side of the boundary it is on.

The Auth Proxy is understood

Plenty of teams reach Cloud SQL through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy rather than over an IP directly, and the card notices when you are.

• Entering 127.0.0.1 or localhost is recognised as the proxy, and the card says so rather than leaving you to wonder whether it is supported.
• The proxy encrypts the tunnel itself, so the SSL option belongs off for that path — the card tells you this at the point where an SSL error would otherwise confuse you.
• For direct IP connections the SSL option belongs on, and it is on by default.
• The proxy is your process to run and manage; nothing about it is bundled into the agent.

Three engines, and a guard against picking the wrong one

A multi-engine card invites one specific mistake: pasting a port that belongs to a different engine than the one selected. That combination fails at connect time with nothing useful to say, so it is caught in the form.

• PostgreSQL on 5432, MySQL on 3306, SQL Server on 1433 — prefilled for the engine you chose.
• Type 3306 with PostgreSQL selected and the card tells you the port belongs to MySQL and asks you to check the engine, rather than passing it through.
• A password with leading or trailing whitespace is flagged as well, because it is almost always a clipboard artifact and it fails as an opaque authentication error.
• Whichever engine you choose, that is what the connection is saved as — Cloud SQL is kept as the badge on the card, not as a connection type.

-- Same read, whichever engine the instance runs
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;