Re: Native Informix Driver for Visual Basic.
On Sun, 3 May 1998 17:00:08 +0200, "Reiner Kunz" <Reiner.Kunz@pr-kunz2.M.eunet.de> wrote: >Hi Nils, > >do you know the issue of Visual Basic Programmers Journal which covered db >access from within Visual Basic? VBPJ November 1997 Vol. 7, No 13 had a long article on DAO, RDO and ADO. There are many others as well. You can find at http://www.devex.com (you have to subscribe, but I don't know at what level). Otherwise there is a lot of information about this available at http://www.microsoft.com/data >cu Reiner > >P.S.: What do you think about the "new" CLI 2.8 which is released by >informix and now also includes Intersolv 3.0 drivers? Which one is better? >CLI or Intersolv? The only opinion I have on these products is that they are useless untill they at least solve the security issues. It's completely mindless to make such products available where there is no way to protect my database from free updates anywhere via tools like MS Access. > I tried both and still have the problem, that "long" >DECIMALs are converted in text strings in Access 97. Any idea what went >wrong? MS Access only resemblence of something like a decimal datatype is the currency datatype. It is fixed to four decimal places (after the decimal point) and I believe 32 digits accuracy. If your decimals are outside this range there is no way MS Access can support them other than converting the data to text. If your decimals are within this range I believe the ODBC driver need special support for returning them to MS Access as currency data, but this is outside my strong points of knowledge, so I may be wrong. If you want them returned as floating point numbers, why did you use decimals in the first place. Of course for some reporting use it might be usefull, but most of the time it could easily become devastating. You realy have to talk to Microsoft about why they haven't implemented the decimal datatype in MS Access. It would be so simple, and would solve a lot of problems. It tells you something about Microsoft that they still haven't done that. There are few tools better than MS Access arround for simple ad hoc access to SQL type databases and simple reporting. There are however several tools that are better for serious reporting and other similar work. Even some that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. We have used Impromptu and PowerPlay from Cognos with success, but there are others as well. If you want to create applications MS Access isn't exactly a very usefull tool. Nils Myklebust NM Data AS Norway E-mail: Nils.Myklebust@nmdata.com FAQ at: http://www.iiug.org/techinfo/faq/faq_top.html (Now with ODBC info under "Third party products".)