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Need help with what ODBC or JDBC driver to use with Alpha Five?

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    Need help with what ODBC or JDBC driver to use with Alpha Five?

    I understand the forum preference is to display your name rather than a company, call-name, etc. so I thought I would oblige in a hope to be more actively involved in the forum. That being said below was my post from my previous account earlier today. Thanks in advance for any assistance. I apologize for the repeated thread.

    I am very new to Alpha Five, like what I see althought trying to write a report against the information stored in an Alpha DB and running into issues. I do not want to use the built in report writer (another topic) although need to know the correct ODBC or JDBC driver to use when trying to connect to an Alpha Five DB using a 3rd parthy report writer (like Crystal Reports).

    Does Alpha Five have an ODBC or JDBC driver?

    I was able to connect using an old Microsoft Visual Fox Pro driver alhtough the VFP ODBC driver crashes a lot when dealing with date and time fields.

    Any help anyone can provide on the correct ODBC and/or JDBC drivers to use with Alpha Five would be greatly appreciated.

    #2
    Re: Need help with what ODBC or JDBC driver to use with Alpha Five?

    You'll find lots of references to it on the forum. It is Foxpro v2.6 - NOT VFP.

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Need help with what ODBC or JDBC driver to use with Alpha Five?

      Scott,

      I am confused at why you would want to use crystal and use Alpha.

      We changed so we could do more with the database functions and use the Alpha report writer. Plus some times using grids to show data works well for reporting........

      You can use the dbf driver for crystal.

      I would just use the Alpha report writer.

      Nicholas
      Nicholas Wieland
      LedgerSuite.com Corp
      [email protected]
      http://www.ledgersuite.com

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Need help with what ODBC or JDBC driver to use with Alpha Five?

        Nicholas,

        Thanks for the response. Crystal is a very powerful report writer and I am not trying to take away from Alpha's Report writer. I am personally committed to using Crystal for a variety of reasons and would rather leave the debate as to "why" out of the thread.

        I am interested in accessing Alpha Databases via ODBC or JDBC and have been testing the StelsDBF JDBC driver. I am however currently encountering a few issues with it during the testing phase. If anyone is interested the StelsDBF JDBC driver can be found here.... http://www.csv-jdbc.com/stels_dbf_jdbc.htm I have not purchased it only using the trial for testing.

        I can successfully create and run reports utilizing Microsoft's Visual Fox Pro ODBC driver located here ... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb190233.aspx although as you can see it is not supported on XP and does encounter issues (Random crashes) when using date fields in reports.

        According to this Microsoft article the Visual Fox Pro ODBC Driver replaced the Fox Pro ODBC Driver. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/235357

        If anyone has any success with ODBC or JDBC connections when accessing an Alpha database with Crystal Reports please let me know.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Need help with what ODBC or JDBC driver to use with Alpha Five?

          Scott,

          I am not sure that that it matters what you use for a login name.

          There are different forum topics for different portions of the alpha product and you are posting in the topic area for the application server which is used for designing web/browser based projects. There is a separate topic area for desktop applications and the only reason I brought this up is that many people that only develop desktop applications do not even read the web server topics.
          Jeff Ryder

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Need help with what ODBC or JDBC driver to use with Alpha Five?

            Jeff,

            Good point, since I web base the end reult, I originally looked at the web section of the forum but in reality there is no difference when it comes to this topic. A higher viewing audience would help. Thanks.

            Scott

            Comment


              #7
              Need help with what ODBC or JDBC driver to use with Alpha Five?

              I am new to Alpha Five and like what I see.


              I am trying to write a report against the information stored in an Alpha Five database using a Crystal Reports (like) application called Crystal-Clear via ODBC or JDBC.


              Crystal-Clear can be found here is anyone is interested..... http://www.inetsoftware.de/products/crystal-clear


              Crystal Clear uses the same connection methods as Crystal Reports and since more people use Crystal Reports, for the purcpose of this thread, lets assume we are talking about Crystal Reports.


              Crystal is a very powerful report writer and I am not trying to take away from Alpha's built-in Report writer although I am personally committed to using Crystal for a variety of reasons. I would rather leave the debate as to "why" to use Crystal Reports vs. Alpha's report writer out of the thread and focus on the ODBC/JDBC issue.


              Can anyone tell me, does Alpha Five v7 or v9 come with an ODBC or JDBC driver? (I cannot find one after installing)


              I can successfully create and run reports utilizing Microsoft's Visual Fox Pro ODBC driver located here ... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb190233.aspx although as you can see it is not supported on XP and does encounter issues (Random crashes) when using date fields in reports.


              According to this Microsoft article the Visual Fox Pro ODBC Driver replaced the Fox Pro ODBC Driver. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/235357


              The built-in dBase driver uses the same DLL as the Visual Fox Pro driver (VFPODBC.DLL dated 12/7/1999)

              I believe the DBF format Alpha uses is the older style


              I am interested in accessing Alpha Databases via ODBC or JDBC and have been testing the StelsDBF JDBC driver. I am however currently encountering a few issues with it during the testing phase. If anyone is interested the StelsDBF JDBC driver can be found here.... http://www.csv-jdbc.com/stels_dbf_jdbc.htm I have not purchased it only using the trial for testing.


              Any help anyone can provide on a working ODBC/JDBC driver solution to use with Alpha Five and Crystal Reports would be greatly appreciated.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Need help with what ODBC or JDBC driver to use with Alpha Five?

                Well it looks like I managed to confuse the Forum software by attempting to place this thread (using the exact same title) in the desktop section, sorry about that.

                Here is an update.

                I found an ODBC driver that did not crash my Crystal report engine rather provided me an ODBC error that allowed me to narrow the problem down to a corrupt memo field.

                In case anyone is interested the drivers are from DataDirect and can be found here.... http://www.datadirect.com/downloads/...cwin/index.ssp

                The DataDirect ODBC drivers are very expensive (The Customer Service Rer mentioned a list price of 16k for a single CPU quad core server). Way to much for what I need it for although I was able to use the trial for testing.

                My report happen to filter on a date field and since my DB was very small (around 700 records) I was able to run my report repeatedly until I narrowed down the offending record. Luckily I only had one this time :)

                To correct the memo field, I opened the table, deleted the contents of the field, clicked save, went back into the field, pasted the original text and clicked save.

                It appears to have resolved the issue for the date range I am attempting to run it for.

                Hope this helps.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Need help with what ODBC or JDBC driver to use with Alpha Five?

                  Scott,
                  Did a small search and found this in an Alpha thread via google---should have searched here first I guess!

                  Anyway it may be of use.
                  http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/al...ad.php?t=44210
                  Mike
                  __________________________________________
                  It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
                  It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
                  Henry David Thoreau
                  __________________________________________



                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Need help with what ODBC or JDBC driver to use with Alpha Five?

                    I reviewed every post on this forum I could find (Including the one you suggested) and none of them describe a proven working method with a driver other than the old VFP driver. If you look at my previous posts I already use the VFP driver with success although the driver is old and has issues because of its age so I am hopeful there is another way.

                    Since my application is Java based I am hopeful there are good inexpensive JDBC drivers that could be used with Alpha.

                    This is a great example of where a technical support line provided by Alpha would make a simple question like this one very easy to get answered. I know they have paid support but the rates are way to high for the average Joe, no one has rates like that not even companies like FileMaker or Microsoft.

                    Comment

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