Using an ODBC driver

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is an interface that allows an application to access data in any ODBC-compliant RDBMS. Since ODBC is such a mature technology, it is the main data access mechanism for Actuate reports. If your reports do not use ODBC connectivity yet, then you should plan to migrate your reports to use ODBC.

Preparing to access data using an ODBC driver

In addition to knowing your data structure, to access your data source using an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) database driver, you must know:

n

The ODBC data source name. Before you use an ODBC connection, you must create an ODBC data source using the ODBC administrator utility that comes with your ODBC driver software. For information about how to set up the data source, see your ODBC documentation. The data source name can be a user data source name (DSN), a system DSN, or a file DSN.

n	The user name and password, if your ODBC driver requires this information.

n	The connection string for your ODBC data source. The connection string includes any other information the connection requires. The contents of this string depend on which driver you use with your ODBC data source. For example, the connection string can include the name of a Microsoft Excel file.

If the data source name is a file DSN, the connection string is the name of the data source, preceded by FILEDSN=. For example, if the file DSN is MYDATA, the connection string you use in e.Report Designer Professional is:   FILEDSN=MYDATA.

If you are using the ODBC driver included with e.Report Designer Professional to access an Oracle database and want to access NCHAR and NVARCHAR fields, add the following phrase to the connection string:

EnableNcharSupport=1

For information about the connection string for your database driver, see your ODBC driver documentation.

Configuring an ODBC driver

The e.Report Designer Professional installation configures several sample ODBC data sources as user DSNs. If you are not the user who installed e.Report Designer Professional or you want to access an additional ODBC data source, you must configure the ODBC data source.

A localized e.Report Designer Professional installation does not install and configure a localized database. To use a localized database, such as a Japanese version of sfdata.mdb, you must configure the localized database as an ODBC data source.

If you use an ODBC driver and want to use parameters in the SELECT statement, SQL-92 imposes limitations on where you can place a parameter in the SELECT statement. For more information about these limitations, see:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?usr=/library/en-us/odbc/htm/odbcstatement_parameters.asp

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