need to access a database in a excel workbook

  • Thread starter Thread starter Greg Liber
  • Start date Start date
G

Greg Liber

Hi!

I'm trying to automatically import information from a Point of Sales
database (POSiTouch) and am having issues with getting the info...

I know where the information is stored I just can't automatically bring it
into the sheet by date (or range of dates)

While I'm definitely not a newbie... the majority of the gang on here really
are heads and tails above my knowledge level... but I'm really good at
following instructions and concepts... so any help would be greatly
appreciated!
Thanks in advance for your help!
 
Looking at their website, they claim, "The Database is fully ODBC
compliant utilizing standard relational approaches to data storage and
retrieval...Data is easily and automatically exported and imported
into your other databases and reporting mechanisms." So I'm thinking
they provide an ODBC driver and this would be your gateway. Have a
look in Control Panel, Data Sources (ODBC), usually under
Administrative Tools. Is there anything under User DSN or System DSN
that looks relevant?
 
Hi!
Thanks for your help!
I can only find the standard Microsoft, dbase and MS Access drivers... which
I'm assuming is good... since this means that it should be easy to access
and use the information in Excel correct?

Now is there a good resource that will allow me to learn the tricks of the
trade in order to import the info? And of course I need to do this on my
own... as it's a catch 22... show me it can be done and then they'll put out
the money to do so...

Anyways I think that I'm looking for pretty basic help... importing specific
periods of information and generating reports from it. I'd prefer to do it
all in Excel as it's taken 5 years to get everybody here to a workable point
in it... I really don't want to invest another 5 years, if you know what I
mean...

Thanks in advance for your assistance!
Greg
 
You need to find out what sort of database (RDBMS) POSiTouch uses. If
it is something like MS Access, MSDE or SQL Server, then you will find
lots of help out there and would explain why there is not specific
driver on your machine.

However, because POSiTouch's website doesn't boast about having a well
know database, I suspect it is something a little more obscure.

Without going into too much detail, here's an example. I have used a
RDBS called Interstsyems Caché. For a machine to create and maintain a
Caché database, it requires Interstsyems' server software to be
installed. For an application such as Excel to connect to a Caché
database on that server, the local machine requires Interstsyems'
client software. The client software installs an ODBC driver on the
local machine and adds various keys in the registry, including a
reference to the driver as 'InterSystems ODBC'. These keys make the
driver appear in the control panel as a data source. For my Excel app
to access a particular Caché database (AIRPLANES) on the server
(myServer), I would use ADO (MS database connectivity technology) and
Microsoft's OLE DB Provider for ODBC, specifying the ODBC driver and
connection properties in the connection string i.e.

Provider=MSDASQL.1;Extended Properties='DRIVER={InterSystems ODBC};
SERVER=MyServer;PORT=1972;DATABASE=AIRPLANES;
UID=_System;PWD=sys'

Based on this experience, I think you need an ODBC driver in order to
connect your Excel app to your POSiTouch database. But you don't have
one on your local machine, so maybe I'm wrong or maybe you haven't
installed the client software (including the driver) on your machine.

If I'm correct, you need to find this ODBC driver. Can any of your
colleague's with five years' experience shed any light on the matter?
Once you've found the driver, you know you can use ADO and immediately
you will be on familiar ground. You will find lots of help about ADO,
including here.

--
 
Thanks for your help! It's amazing the type of information you can get from
these newsgroups! It's refreshing to have this type of support from
"strangers" and I really do appreciate it!

This gives me a start! I'll see what info I can get about the system and
the database it uses. The files with the info I need are all .dbf and .dat
extensions and there are some .cdx files with the same file name... which is
a "database index" file

I know I'll more questions once I get the info that you asked me to get/
look for.

Thanks again!
 
Doing a google search using:

dbf dat cdx database

turns up a lot of hits for FoxPro.

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