Testing CV11 With ODBC

Related Information

Server ODBC Connectivity Workstation See Also

Examples & Tutorials

- Database Topics - Networking Topics - System Administration Topics - Database Maintenance Topics - Backup Database Topics - Get Help Topics - Installation Topics - Upgrading Topics - ODBC Topics Learn More About Collect! Order Custom Work

This document explains what to do if you want to test CV11 on a machine that is already running CV10 with ODBC connectivity.

Server

When you initially set up ODBC for CV10, you most likely ran the xodbc.exe utility. This copied the connect.ini to the Windows folder and created a CV10 folder with the ODBC drivers. A Data Source was added for Velocis RDS. This read the connect.ini and used the files in the Windows\CV10 folder.

You were able to run the RDS Server, open CV10 and access the database with a third party ODBC interface.

If you then install CV11 on this machine, when you try to run it for the first time, you get an error "Server not available." You will notice that the CV11 Server has started, but the Collect! interface cannot get passed this error screen. This is because CV11 is trying to read the connect.ini in the Windows folder instead of the CV11\bin\connect.ini.

To remedy this, close CV11 and shut down the CV11 Server. Navigate to your CV11\bin folder and open the connect.ini file in a simple text editor.

Highlight the [RDS] section - Protocol, Host and Port lines and copy them. Navigate to your Windows folder and open the connect.ini. Paste the [RDS] section into this connect.ini, right ABOVE the one that is there now. Copy the Host information from the existing [RDS] section. Now you have two identical [RDS] sections EXCEPT for the Port number. CV10 uses Port 1531 and CV11 uses Port 1530.

Now you will be able to run the CV10 Server, CV11 Server and CV10 and CV11 on the same machine, since both Servers expect an [RDS] section in the connect.ini.

The [RDS] section for CV11 must be in the first position in the Windows folder's connect.ini

ODBC Connectivity

To set up ODBC connectivity for CV11 on this machine, use the command line prompt and navigate to your CV11\bin folder. Run instodbc -a [dll path] RDS, where [dll path] is the path to your CV11\bin folder.

Now you will have an RDS data source (CV11) and a Velocis RDS data source (CV10).

Whichever [RDS] section is first in your connect.ini, that version of Collect! will be able to connect with ODBC. Following the instructions so far, you should have the CV11 [RDS] in the first position in the connect.ini in the Windows folder. So you should be able to connect to your CV11 data through ODBC. However, if you try to connect to your CV10 data using ODBC, you will now get a "communication link failure" because it will try to connect to the wrong port by reading the first entry and stopping there. To remedy this, we need to add an extra CV10 data source to use with ODBC.

To set up an extra data source for CV10 on this machine, use the command line prompt and navigate to your CV10\bin folder. Run instodbc -a [dll path] RDS1, where [dll path] is the path to your Windows\CV10 folder. This is the same folder that was created when xodbc.exe was run originally.

Example:

instodbc -a c:\WINNT\CV10 RDS1

Now you will have an RDS data source (CV11), and Velocis RDS, Velocis RDS1 data sources (CV10).

Navigate to your Windows folder connect.ini and copy the [RDS] section that applies to your CV10 install.

Paste it right below the existing one and relabel it [RDS1].

Now you have one entry for CV11, [RDS], and two entries for CV10, [RDS] and [RDS1], in the Windows folder connect.ini.

Now you will be able to run the CV10 Server, CV11 Server and CV10 and CV11 on the same machine, and connect to both databases using ODBC.

Workstation

If CV10 ODBC connectivity is not set up yet for the workstation, you will need to install the ODBC driver using xodbc.exe BEFORE proceeding.

Copy the Windows folder connect.ini, created in the previous steps, to the Windows folder of each Workstation that you want to use ODBC.

Then create a data source on the Workstation for CV11 - RDS and CV10 - RDS1.

For CV11, install the CV11Client and run instodbc from the CV11Client\bin to create an RDS data source.

For workstations that have CV10 ODBC drivers already installed, if the Server is a mapped drive, you can run instodbc from the command line using CV10\bin to create RDS1. If the Server is not a mapped drive, you can use the Data Source Administrator to create an User and System DSN for Velocis RDS1 for server RDS1.