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Recommended Configurations

Description

Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) can be downloaded from http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/mdac/downloads/default.aspx.

Microsoft Access

  1. Install Microsoft MDAC on the client. This has been tested with version 2.8.

  2. When using the Alpha Anywhere Access driver, no ODBC configuration is necessary.

  3. When using the Alpha Anywhere ODBC driver to connect to your Access database, you must create a Data Source using the ODBC dialogs.

    • Select ODBC as your API (Application Programming Interface).

    • Select "Access " as your syntax type.

Microsoft Excel

  1. Install Microsoft MDAC on the client. This has been tested with version 2.8.

  2. When using the Alpha Anywhere Excel driver, no ODBC configuration is necessary. This driver makes use of the Microsoft Jet ODBC driver.

  3. When using the Alpha Anywhere ODBC driver to connect to your Excel spreadsheet, you must create a Data Source using the ODBC dialogs.

    • Select ODBC as your API (Application Programming Interface).

    • Select "Excel" as your syntax type.

The tabs on the Excel workbook are considered "system" tables. They are accessed using the syntax [$], where is the label on the tab.

Microsoft SQL Server

  1. Install Microsoft MDAC on the client. This has been tested with version 2.8.

  2. To display available servers, install SQL Distributed Management Objects (SQL-DMO). This code should be installed with the Microsoft SQL Server server or client.

  3. When using the Alpha Anywhere SQL Server driver, no ODBC configuration is necessary. This driver makes use of the Microsoft SQL Server ODBC driver.

  4. When using the Alpha Anywhere ODBC driver to connect to your SQL Server database, you must create a Data Source using the ODBC dialogs.

    • Select ODBC as your API (Application Programming Interface).

    • Select "SQLServer" as your syntax type.

MySQL

When using the Alpha Anywhere MySQL driver, no client configuration is necessary. AlphaDAO links Alpha Anywhere libraries statically with version MySQL 4.1.8, meaning that there is no additional configuration required on the client. The MySQL server can be version 3.x and above, but many core SQL features are being introduced in later releases (such as Transactions in 4.1.x and Views in 5.0.2). The client functionality will be limited by the server. When using the Alpha Anywhere ODBC driver to connect to your MySQL database:

  1. Install the MySQL ODBC driver.

  2. Create a Data Source using the ODBC dialogs.

    • 1. Select ODBC as your API (Application Programming Interface).

    • 2. Select the "MySQL" as your syntax type.

For Linux servers (and all UNIX servers with case-sensitive file systems), MySQL defaults to case sensitive table names. This means that if you create a table as PRODUCT, you can then create another table or tables with the same spelling but different cases such as Product, product and so on (these become three unique tables). To address this issue (and before creating any tables), Alpha Software recommends that you set the variable lower_case_table_names in the system configuration file to the value 1. This will force all created tables to lower case and make the comparisons of table names case-insensitive. See the MySQL documentation for more information.

Case Sensitivity on Linux Servers

For Linux servers (and all UNIX servers with case-sensitive file systems), MySQL defaults to case sensitive table names. This means that if you create a table as PRODUCT, you can then create another table or tables with the same spelling but different cases such as Product, product and so on (these become three unique tables). To address this issue (and before creating any tables) we recommend that you set the variable lower_case_table_names in the system configuration file to the value 1. This will force all created tables to lower case and make the comparisons of table names case-insensitive. See the MySQL documentation for more information ( http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/name-case-sensitivity.html ).

ODBC

  1. Depending on the database you wish to connect use, you will have to install additional software as specified by the vendor.

  2. Once the software is installed, follow the instructions provided by your vendor to create a Data Source.

  3. Select ODBC as your database API (Application Programming Interface).

  4. If Alpha provides a syntax handler (see the list below) simply select this syntax type. If Alpha does not provide a syntax handler for your vendor, select "Basic" from the list of syntaxes when you connect to your database.

Oracle Lite

  1. Install the Oracle Lite software.

  2. When using the Alpha Anywhere Oracle Lite driver, no ODBC configuration is necessary. This driver makes use of the Oracle Lite ODBC driver (version 4.0).

  3. When using the Alpha Anywhere ODBC driver to connect to your Oracle Lite database, you must also create a Data Source using the ODBC dialogs.

    • 1. Select ODBC as your API (Application Programming Interface).

    • 2. Select the "OracleLite" as your syntax type.

Oracle 10g and Oracle Express Edition

The Alpha Anywhere Oracle driver links directly to the Oracle Call Interface (OCI) for Oracle 10g and Oracle Express Edition. Connections to this driver may specify either a host server name and port or a local defined Oracle TNS (Transparent Network Substrate) entry. The following redistributable Oracle Instant Client files are required:

  • OCI Instant Client Shared Library : oraociei10.dll (82 MB)

  • OCI Client Code Library : oci.dll (188 KB)

  • Oracle Security Library : orannzsbb10.dll (963 KB)

The instant client files can either be installed with the Oracle driver or they may already be present if the user has installed the Oracle client software. Because of the size of oraociei10.dll, it is probably a good idea to check before downloading the file.

Oracle Client Installation. In Alpha Anywhere, we ship the new Oracle 11g client.

  1. When using the Alpha Anywhere ODBC driver to connect to your Oracle database, you generally must first configure a TNS Name using the Oracle helper application.

  2. Create a Data Source using the ODBC dialogs.

    • 1. Select ODBC as your API (Application Programming Interface).

    • 2. Select "Oracle" as your syntax type.

Limitations

Desktop applications only.

See Also