Hey kids.

Do you know of any good books on FileMaker ODBC; I'm an ODBC virgin, so I need the basics.

Thanks.

Paul

I've just started on this myself. The FMP Help and reference actually have a lot of information: have you looked there yet?

I'll summarise what I've learned so far (corrections from those more knowledgeable appreciated)

1) Local Data Access Companion: allows ODBC sharing of databases on the same computer only

2) Remote Data Access Companion: shares databases over TCP/IP between remote computers

3) Data sources need to be set up through the ODBC control panel on each computer separately -- this is an OS thing, not FM.

4) Data is imported/manipulated through SQL queries initiated by FM scripts.

5) FMP ODBC shared database passwords must allow Export record privilege.

6) Files must remain open to share data.

7) The FM filename (sans extension) is the ODBC table name. Field names are columns.

8) Field names with spaces may prevent some query tools from accessing the data. Either remove the spaces or surround the field names with double quotes or grave characters in the SQL query.

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So, to summarise: FMP allows you to share and access ODBC data sources. The information is moved about with SQL queries. FMP does NOT generate the queries for you, you've got to learn SQL and create them yourself. FMP just processes them. The ODBC data sources must be set up on each individual computer before the ODBC will work.

I'm at the stage where I've downloaded a huge pdf document with all the SQL commands, and having begun reading it I'm actively looking around for somebody who already knows this stuff to do the queries for me! It's like learning CDML all over again.