The easiest way to access your COBOL data (now an ODBC data source) is using Microsoft Query (MS Query), a database query tool that comes with Microsoft Office. You can invoke MS Query directly from Windows applications like Word and Excel. Once in MS Query, you can navigate through a series of menus to create automatic SQL statements for the ODBC driver manager. ODBC calls to ACUCOBOL-GT data are totally transparent when you use MS Query. Other Windows applications, like Access, Crystal Reports, and Visual Basic have their own interfaces to ODBC data sources.
This chapter describes how to retrieve ACUCOBOL-GT data from some of the most popular Windows applications: Word, Excel, and Access. For instructions on accessing an ODBC data source from other Windows applications, refer to the application-specific user documentation. The examples in this chapter are based on the sample data source that comes with AcuODBC. If you have already read Chapters 5 or 6 and worked with these files, your results may look slightly different.
To access data from Excel 2000