3.1 Data Source Names (DSNs)

Once you have successfully installed AcuODBC on your computer, you must create a data source for every group of Vision or relative files that your Windows application needs to access. In order to complete this step, you must choose a directory where "data dictionary" files are stored. These files are described in section 6.1 "Data Dictionaries".

The data source is one of the main components of an ODBC installation. Physically, data sources consist of sets of data and their associated environments. This means that the term "data source" actually indicates the data files, the operating system, the file system or DBMS used to manage the physical data, and the optional network software used to access this data. The term data source name (DSN), therefore, refers to something rather complicated.

Because part of the ODBC mission is to hide the complexity of underlying software, ODBC architects have chosen to use an abstract name to identify all the components of a data source. This data source name maps all the underlying software components necessary to access the data.

The name you assign to a data source is arbitrary. When users try to access the data files, they will be asked to specify the DSN. Therefore, you should assign a meaningful name that represents the type of data that the files contain, or the type of query that will be made against the files.

Compatibility Notes: If you are upgrading from a version of AcuODBC earlier than Version 5.1, you must delete old DSNs and create new ones. You cannot use DSNs created with AcuODBC Version 5.0 or earlier with AcuODBC Version 5.2. You may use DSNs created with Version 5.1.

For SQL compatibility, to improve performance, and to ensure that data files and ".xfd" files have the same base name, use underscores, rather than hyphens, in table names. See section 6.2, "XFD Files" for more information.

This section describes how to create data source names (or DSNs) for your COBOL data files. To create a DSN, you must add the data source name to the ODBC Data Source Administrator in the Windows control panel. The ODBC Data Source Administrator, included as part of your operating system, is your interface for adding, removing, or configuring ODBC data sources on your system. After you establish your data source name, you enter the additional information about the data source through the AcuODBC Configuration property sheet, provided as a configuration DLL. If you are running AcuODBC Server, you must create a DSN on the remote server as well as on the client. This chapter focuses on creating a local DSN. See Chapter 9, "Remote Data Sources", for details on creating a DSN on the server.

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To add a data source name