Help with connecting to FoxPro please

  • Thread starter Thread starter Burak Gunay
  • Start date Start date
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Burak Gunay

Hello,


I am trying to connect to a visual fox pro table from my asp.net page.


I dragged an odbc connection and set it to a visual fox pro driver file

dsn pointing to "mydocuments" folder.


Here is the connection string


SourceDB=c:\Documents and Settings\bgunay\My
Documents;PWD=;SourceType=DBF;Collate=Machine;Deleted=Yes;BackgroundFetch=Y­es;Exclusive=No;Driver=Microsoft

Visual FoxPro Driver;Null=Yes;UID=


I then dragged an odbc command and set it to this connection. I was
then able to see the list of visual fox pro(.dbf) tables in "my
documents" folder. I then set the query to command text to return every

record from the "corp" table.


Then, I executed the command as follows


cnn.Open()


Dim reader As Odbc.OdbcDataReader
reader = OdbcCommand.ExecuteReader()
While reader.Read
Response.Write(reader.Item(0) & "<br>")
End While


It came back with "Corp.dbf does not exist" which is so bizarre since
corp.dbf exists
and is visible when I build the odbc command. But for some reason when
I try to select records from it from the code behind, I get that weird
message.


Any ideas?


Thanks,


Burak
 
Hi Burak,

First off, you might do better with the FoxPro and Visual FoxPro OLE DB data
provider, downloadable from msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/updates . Over the
years new data features have been added to FoxPro data files and some
features are not ODBC compatible.

Second, is there a DBC file present in your directory? This is a "Database
Container" which contains metadata about the tables. If it's present your
connection string should point to it and not just to the free table
directory where the tables are. A minimal connection string for a free table
directory looks like "Provider=VFPOLEDB.1;Data Source=C:\Temp\;" and for a
DBC: "Provider=VFPOLEDB.1;Data Source=C:\Temp\MyDBC.dbc;". You'll get the
defaults for everything else.

Third, lots of people have problems with ASP due to permissions. The account
that your ASP code runs under must have permission to the directory where
the data lies. Can you paste your code into a VB Console Application and run
it? (Change Response.Write to Console.WriteLine.)

--
Cindy Winegarden MCSD, Microsoft Visual FoxPro MVP
(e-mail address removed) www.cindywinegarden.com


I am trying to connect to a visual fox pro table from my asp.net page.
I dragged an odbc connection and set it to a visual fox pro driver file
dsn pointing to "mydocuments" folder.

Here is the connection string
SourceDB=c:\Documents and Settings\bgunay\My
Documents;PWD=;SourceType=DBF;Collate=Machine;Deleted=Yes;BackgroundFetch=Y­es;Exclusive=No;Driver=Microsoft
Visual FoxPro Driver;Null=Yes;UID=

I then dragged an odbc command and set it to this connection. I was
then able to see the list of visual fox pro(.dbf) tables in "my
documents" folder. I then set the query to command text to return every
record from the "corp" table.

cnn.Open()
Dim reader As Odbc.OdbcDataReader
reader = OdbcCommand.ExecuteReader()
While reader.Read
Response.Write(reader.Item(0) & "<br>")
End While

It came back with "Corp.dbf does not exist" which is so bizarre since
corp.dbf exists
and is visible when I build the odbc command. But for some reason when
I try to select records from it from the code behind, I get that weird
message.
 
Hi Cindy,

I talked to my project manager and this is what she told me

"Use the dbaseIV connection string below instead of visual foxpro. Our
tables are not truly visual foxpro tables. I use this connection string
and a simple Select query and it works.

Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=c:\upload;Extended
Properties=dBASE IV"

This worked but the interesting thing was I had to create the upload
directory
and place the .dbf file there. It did not like "my documents" or
"desktop" directories
for some reason. Maybe it's some kind of access issue.

My next issue is this: I created a dts package to update this .dbf
file in the
upload directory. I have it so that the dts package will delete the
existing .dbf
file and create it again, so we won't have duplicate data.

But for some reason, when I run the package the table is neve rgettign
deleted, only appended to.

Do you know why this might be?

Thank you,

Burak
 
Hi Burak,

dBase IV is an older technology and I'm sure it's looking for 8 character
directories and an 8.3 type file name. That's why it doesn't like the long
paths with spaces in them.

Your other question is how to make a DTS package delete a file. I think
that's better answered in a SQL Server newsgroup.
 
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