Do I have to have Paradox to use ODBC? 2

[sera]

Do I have to have Paradox installed in order to use the ODBC driver for it? Say I have a paradox file I want to connect to using ODBC but I am doing it all on a computer that does not have Paradox or Wordperfect Office installed on it.
I ask this question because....I can open an Access db and a SQL db using ODBC without having either installed but I cannot open an oracle db using ODBC unless oracle is installed on my machine.

Sera
I often believe that...
My computer is possessed!

 

[footpad]

Sera,

No, you don't need Paradox installed to use an ODBC, however, you may need a recent version of Paradox in order to have a decent ODBC driver for it.

Also, you may need to have BDE installed in order to effectively use the ODBC driver you end up choosing.

There are, really, three alternatives for ODBC drivers:

1. MS Office provides Paradox ODBC driver, however, it's limited to Paradox 4.0 tables and has a reputation for being, um, difficult to work with.

2. Recent versions of Microsoft's Data Access Components (MDAC) provide an OLE-DB driver for Paradox tables that can work with Paradox 7 tables, however, this requires BDE to be installed and can be a bit of a pain to install and deploy to additional workstations.

3. Data Direct Technologies provides a Paradox ODBC driver that has an excellent reputation, however, they charge ~$650 for a five user license (for more information, please see

http://www.datadirect-technologies.com/products/odbc/odbcindex).

4. Corel has provided a licensed version of Data Driect's driver with each version of Paradox released since Paradox 8.0.

To my mind, the most cost effective solution is to obtain a recent version of Paradox 8 or WordPerfect Office Professional, as these include the ODBC driver as part of the package. You can often find copies for very reasonable prices by scanning the auction sites or searching places like half.com. Keep in mind that you need the official Professional release; the ODBC driver is not included with Academic or OEM versions.

From a personal view point, it's always good to have a copy of Paradox available at each organization or location where you're using Paradox tables. This lets you repair ddamages tables, rebuild indexes, troubleshoot data values, and so on. While it's not strictly necessary, it does help--especially when your users are calling with strange support questions.

Hope this helps...

-- Lance

 

[sera]

This is exactly the information I was looking for...thank you so much.
--Star for you


Sera
I often believe that...
My computer is possessed!

 

[Applesauce]

This is exactly what I was looking for also. Lance, could you offer any more information on how to make item #2 work? We are trying to read data from a Paradox application with which the BDE Administrator was installed. Any information that you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Jeff

 

[footpad]

Jeff,

To be honest, my copies of MDAC are severely messed up right now. I'm trying to get them straightened out, but haven't had much luck. I'll try to look into the problem in the evenings this week and let you know what (if anything) I find.

-- Lance