diff --git a/providers/exasol/pyproject.toml b/providers/exasol/pyproject.toml
index 2c41a954f3600..78478aa0f0988 100644
--- a/providers/exasol/pyproject.toml
+++ b/providers/exasol/pyproject.toml
@@ -65,6 +65,13 @@ dependencies = [
     'pandas>=2.2.3; python_version >="3.13"',
 ]
 
+# The optional dependencies should be modified in place in the generated file
+# Any change in the dependencies is preserved when the file is regenerated
+[project.optional-dependencies]
+sqlalchemy = [
+    "sqlalchemy>=1.4.49",
+]
+
 [dependency-groups]
 dev = [
     "apache-airflow",
diff --git a/providers/exasol/src/airflow/providers/exasol/hooks/exasol.py b/providers/exasol/src/airflow/providers/exasol/hooks/exasol.py
index 417ee56b1de17..cf2aa1629c96c 100644
--- a/providers/exasol/src/airflow/providers/exasol/hooks/exasol.py
+++ b/providers/exasol/src/airflow/providers/exasol/hooks/exasol.py
@@ -24,9 +24,13 @@
 import pyexasol
 from deprecated import deprecated
 from pyexasol import ExaConnection, ExaStatement
-from sqlalchemy.engine import URL
 
-from airflow.exceptions import AirflowProviderDeprecationWarning
+try:
+    from sqlalchemy.engine import URL
+except ImportError:
+    URL = None
+
+from airflow.exceptions import AirflowOptionalProviderFeatureException, AirflowProviderDeprecationWarning
 from airflow.providers.common.sql.hooks.handlers import return_single_query_results
 from airflow.providers.common.sql.hooks.sql import DbApiHook
 
@@ -96,6 +100,10 @@ def sqlalchemy_url(self) -> URL:
 
         :return: the extracted sqlalchemy.engine.URL object.
         """
+        if URL is None:
+            raise AirflowOptionalProviderFeatureException(
+                "The 'sqlalchemy' library is required to use 'sqlalchemy_url'."
+            )
         connection = self.connection
         query = connection.extra_dejson
         query = {k: v for k, v in query.items() if k.lower() != "sqlalchemy_scheme"}
@@ -115,6 +123,10 @@ def get_uri(self) -> str:
 
         :return: the extracted uri.
         """
+        if URL is None:
+            raise AirflowOptionalProviderFeatureException(
+                "The 'sqlalchemy' library is required to render the connection URI."
+            )
         return self.sqlalchemy_url.render_as_string(hide_password=False)
 
     def _get_pandas_df(