We encourage you to use an Anaconda installation of Python, as most libraries needed for connecting to the database and fetching/saving data are there. You can install the MySQL connector from via pip install. From your terminal / shell / command line / Anaconda prompt, issue:

You should see something similar to the following screen shot, which indicates that your Python-MySQL connector has successfully installed:

In the case that you run into issues with pip install, you may download the MySQL-Python connector directly from: https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/python/ Please make sure you select the correct installer for your system and Python version:

We encourage you to use this configuration file for all connections to the MariaDB server. This file contains the hostname of the server, connection port, login credentials, and the location of the certificate file. You should have received this file from the RCS staff when you obtained your account and saved it at the appropriate location in your home folder. Guard this file as you would your credit card number! Please see our Configuration Files page for more information.

We encourage you to use our simple python script file as a template for connecting to the MariaDB server. Please contact research@hbs.edu for the sample script.

Please see https://dev.mysql.com/doc/connector-python/en/connector-python-examples.html for more information on appropriate functions to use.