Outside access with C/Front or C/ODBC

Mark_Dielmann

I'm looking for some information about how to use C/ODBC or C/Front to access the proprietary database from outside Navision. I know both options should be able to do it, but are there any problems to watch for? Is one solution better than the other? Also, we may want to take whatever we develop onto the Web in the future. Thanks.

Michael_Weigand

You can access the NF database with odbc as well as with c/front. odbc is for accessing all different types of databases. So it is not espeacially made for accessing the NF database, but with c/odbc you can do so.

There are some disadvantages:

1.
It is very slow (and perhaps not very stable)

2.
You have to setup odbc data sources in the control panel. )I had proplems on Win2k, but no problems on Win98).

3.
You have to use SQL statements, that differ from the statements we know from c/side.


So you might want to use c/front. This is especially made for accessing the NF database from other programs. It uses funtions that are quite similar to those in c/side.

You can use c/front either by the OCX or by the DLL. The DLL cannot be used with every compiler, because it uses the _CDECL calling convention. I know of 3 compilers that can do this:

- Microsoft Visual C++ Version 4.1 or 5
- Watcom C++ Version 10.5 (?)
- GFA-Basic 32

I think the Ocx is easier to handle than the Dll...

Andreas_Lundin

Hi guys

Just a little comment on the compilers mentioned in the prior posting <img border="0" title="" alt="" src="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif" />

The compilers mentioned are all commercial compilers? If there's anyone out there who's interested in using freeware compilers, I have some experience using these combined with C/FRONT. The compilers I have been able to use are:

LCC-Win32(Shareware compiler)
Cygwin or Mingw32(freeware compilers)

The compilers don't currently support ocx compilation, because it's a Microsoft product, and noone has ported it to these compilers yet. It is possible to compile both C/FRONT dll and executable files using these compilers.

You have to change a few lines in the C/FRONT headerfiles to compile correctly. But if anyone is interested, I would be happy to post a topic showing how to use these compilers.

Regards
Andreas

Michael_Weigand

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Andreas Lundin:
Just a little comment on the compilers mentioned in the prior posting <img border="0" title="" alt="" src="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif" />

The compilers mentioned are all commercial compilers?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes they are. (not sure for the Watcom C++)