Creating a pcMRP VFP ODBC DSN

15.17 Overview

A slideshow of this module is available at:

http://www.pcmrp.com/mrp101/odbcopeninternetexplorer.htm

pc/MRP product is written with Microsoft’s Visual FoxPro. For better security and data reliability, pc/MRP versions 8.00 and above use the native Visual FoxPro database structure in stead of the previous DB-III structure. A side effect of this change requires the use of the Microsoft ODBC drivers for Visual FoxPro tables if you use a program such as Excel, Access, Crystal Reports, etc. to read the pc/MRP data.

15.17.1 Step 1 Access the pc/MRP web site.

15.17.2 Step 2 Navigate to the Technical Support page.

Scroll down the page and select the Support Files link.

15.17.3 Step 3 Navigate to the file download page.

Scroll down to and click on the Visual FoxPro ODBC Drivers link. There is another link in the same paragraph with instructions like these in a MS Word document; it also contains the ODBC link.

This will take you to Microsoft’s web site for the download.

Windows XP and higher may have already installed the Visual FoxPro ODBC drivers as a part of the operating system. You can verify this by going to Step 7 (15.17.7).

15.17.4 Step 4 Microsoft’s ODBC download page.

15.17.5 Step 5 Follow the on-screen instructions to download the file.

15.17.6 Step 6 Navigate to the downloaded the file.

Double-clicking in the VFPODBC.msi file will automatically start the install process.

15.17.7 Step 7 After the install is complete, start the Data Sources (ODBC) menu.

Older Windows operating systems may have the ODBC Data Sources listed in the Control Panel and not in the Administrative Tools section.

Select System DSN as that allows any logon user of this computer to use this pc/MRP Data Source to access pc/MRP.

15.17.8 Step 8 Clicking Add presents the following screen to select an ODBC driver to configure.

There may be more FoxPro drivers listed. Be sure to select the Microsoft FoxPro VFP Driver (*.dbf).

15.17.9 Step 9 After selecting the VFP driver and clicking ‘Finish’ you need to connect to pc/MRP.

The Data Source Name must be ‘pcMRPVFP’ if you are connecting pc/MRP to UPS shipping.

The Description field is your choice.

You MUST choose Free Table directory as the Database type.

Browse to your pc/MRP directory to select the Path to the pc/MRP files. Single-user versions of pc/MRP are usually located at ‘C:\pcmrpw’ whereas a multi-user version is on a server and you need to browse to that directory for pc/MRP.

Some customers have a Peer-to-Peer network and the pc/MRP directory may be on that workstation. You would  just browse to that workstation instead of a server.

Now press ‘OK’ twice to end the ODBC setup for pc/MRP.