Re: BIG ROOKIE QUESTION

Ed Bragg wrote: > > Hello Informix Gods, > > (Ducking WAY down low) Could anybody be kind enough to guide me in the right > direction on how to connect a Windows95 system to an HP-UX Informix Database > through our network. We have several Large databases on our HP-UX system > that I'd like to either import or access directly with a Windows95 system > (via Access97, Visual FoxPro, VisualBasic, or anything). > > I'm new extremely confident I can follow any instructions and am very > technically inclined to read around and figure it out, but I'm under a > deadline to show the bosses something, and not quite sure if we can do it. > We don't have any in-house programmers, or DB Administrators. I'm just your > average know-a-little-bit-about-everything techie, and was wondering if we > could do some slick things for the big guys, like pulling data out of our > huge databases and formatting the raw data into some interesting reports > that are more meaningful than those supplied by our Software Supplier who > happens to store our data in Informix databases. > > Thanks for being kind, > > Ed Bragg Ed, I have lots of experience connecting 95 and NT client machines that are using PowerBuilder to develop apps against Informix databases. The way we do it here is to use an Informix product called CLI on the client machine. CLI is simply the Intersolve ODBC driver for Informix. Once it is installed, it is configured through a utility in CLI called Setnet. The entries in this configuration are equivalent to the sqlhosts file entries on the UNIX server. Anyway, this sets the foundation for creating an ODBC data source. The ODBC data source has the database name that you are connecting to and fills in the information from the setnet config. The ODBC data source is what you connect with from your client app. There are lots of little hidden tricks in each of the steps, but certainly doable. Let me know one way or the other if you have success. -- James Edmiston SAIC - GCCS-A (703)813-2880 jedmis@agccs.lmco.com