I am trying to set up an SQL table as an external data source on FMSA 9.0v3.

With the assistance our our IT guys, we have set up DSN access through the Windows control panel and all indications are that the connection is fine.

In trying to add this table as an external data source in a hosted FileMaker database, I see it listed can easily add it as an ODBC source. But I am not sure what to put as a username and password in the the "Authentication" area [i had assumed that since we had already configured the creditials on the host machine, then we should be able to connect through directly].

Putting in the same username and password as applied through the control panel on the windows server gives the following message as soon as I try to add a new table reference relating to that data source: "The Account and Password you entered cannot be used to access this file. Please try again".

Is authentication referring to a differnt username and password than I have entered? The scant documentation provided by FileMaker on this infer that all this is self-evident.

Can anyone suggest what might be prevnting me from connecting?

This is referring to the user name and password of an account that has permissions to your external data. You should be able to use the same credentials that were used to setup the DSN.

Thanks for the response.

We worked out what the problem was. The user account in the SQL database originally has a an underscore ("_")in the username. The password was also more than 8 characters long. We recreated the account to avoid the underscore and shorten the password to less than 8 characters and it worked fine.

That said, our IT adviser siad that he will need to make a confuration setting to the MSDTC service running on the SQL server (which runs under windows server 2003). He said that the MSDTC configuration interface is not installed by default, and that to run SQL2005 the box needs to be configured to allow remote client connections. He said that SQL2005 is far more temperamental than the earlier version, and can present a range of problems if this setting is not configured correctly.

Hope this help anyone selse who is having similar problems.