What ODBC Driver should I use for VFP version 6?

Question

My version of VFP is version 6. Trying to port a web app from one computer to a second one which has never accessed VFP via ODBC, I encounter a message telling me I have to download the latest version of the driver at a certain link on msdn.microsoft.com. But that link is broken. Nosing around, I have concluded that I should perhaps be downloading the very latest version, OLE DB Provider for VFP, even though my version of VFP is much older.

Is that correct?

Even so, when I attempted to download VFPOLEDB.DLL, all I could find to download was VFPOLEDB.msm, which my computer does not recognize.

Please advise me what to do!

Thanks,

Peyton Todd

P.S. I have a Windows XP PC, Service Pack 3, Pentium 4 2.53 CPU with 1 gig of RAM

Answer 1

Okay, I just tried the other choice on that download page, VFPOLEDBsetup.msi. It claims to have successfully installed the VFP driver. Nonetheless, when I go back to the ODBC setup dialog and try to set up the connection to my VFP database, I get the same message as before, telling me I must go to msdn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro/downloads to install it. As I noted earlier, that is a broken link.

Answer 2

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb190233.aspx

Answer 3

ODBC and OLE-DB are different technologies that do the same thing, connect to a database. You typically will not mix and match them. If you are using VFP 6.0, you can use the VFP ODBC Driver at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb190233.aspx. However, the ODBC driver was not updated after that and does not support new capabilities added in later versions. So, if you have VFP 7.0, 8.0, or 9.0, you will need to use the OLE-DB Provider and connect to the data in a different way (that is, you won't use ODBC at all).

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Craig Berntson MCSD, Visual FoxPro MVP www.craigberntson.com