[Odb-help] Connecting ODB data with other applications

[odb-help at lists.democracygroups.org]

Dear ODB users:

Here is something for the techies out there.

Jeff Strong asked the question below about accessing
ODB data with Open Office.  I don't know Jeff's plans
for this, but accessing ODB files from open office is not 
hard at all.  (FYI, the acronym ODBC, below, stands for
Open Database Connectivity; this is a standard to allow
computers to share data and is not to be confused
with the acronym ODB.)  I am providing this info for
developers who might want to link ODB in interesting ways;
for instance a consultant in Minneapolis has linked ODB
data with a sample Cold Fusion data entry form.  The same
thing could be done with PHP as I suggested last week.

Anyone can try this.  However if you plan to use it you will
need to "know what you are doing" -- i.e. you should be
pretty experienced working with databases...

1) Go to Control panel in Windows.  Open up 32-bit
    ODBC administrator. On some computers, you have
    to open up Administrative Tools to get to "Data
    Sources - ODBC" to reach the administrator.
2) Click on "System DSN"
3) Click on "Add"
4) Select "Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb) and click Finish.
   This will open up the "Microsoft ODBC Access Setup" window.
5) Give a friendly name to your ODB data.  Use something
    like "ODBtest" as your "data source name."
6) Click the "Select..." button to open up the Select Database window.
7) In the pull down on the lower left (List Files of Type), select
   the second option, which should be "All Files (*.*)"
8) Browse for your ODB data file and then click OK, then
    keep clicking Ok.

Now you can open up Open Office.

Under the Tools Menu, Select "Data Sources", and then
click on "New Data Source" in the upper left.  Finally:

1) Give your data source a name that Open Office will use
2) Under "Database Type", select "ODBC"
3) Under Data Source URL, click on the elipsis ("...") and
    you should select the name that you set up above, in
    step 5.
4) Click OK and you are done!

-Rich Cowan

P.S. while we are on the subject of data, someone asked how
to create a MYSQL schema based on ODB data.  It is quite
easy; a utility called "export2Mysql" is provided as one
of the Access Modules in the ODB zip code file.  You will
need some version of Access to run the conversion program.
If anyone would like the output, let me know, I will post it
on the ODB web site.


>So someone could use the OpenOffice.org (free)
>database front end to "connect" to the jet database?
>Do the "freely distributable" drivers work with
>OpenOffice.org?
>
>(I don't know anything about php. I'll have to read up
>on it.)
>
>Jeff