Guide - Part 1

DBComp Usage Guide - Part 1

Preface

DBComp is somewhat technical. Users who are familiar with database technology will understand the terminology and, hopefully, DBComp usage.

If terms like "OBDC Data Source" are completely new to you then plan on spending some time experimenting before you proceed with usage on live data. We suggest you make up two small experimental databases and use them to practice on. One practice route is to make some differences between the two databases directly within your database program. Then try a comparison and look at the actual difference file produced. Then try updating the original Old Data Source using the difference file. Open up the Old Data Source dbase in your database program and check the results. Move on to live data only after you are satisfied with the results.

The below information is presented to help you get going with your experiments.

Also see Performing A Merge and the program F1 hlp topic, Usage Guidelines.

Performing a Comparison

Usage begins with establishing your "OBDC data sources". This is something that is done outside of DBComp. We suggest you review the documentation for your database and/or operating system for setting up OBDC data sources.

If you have MS Office or MS Access, OBDC drivers are installed automatically and are controlled through an applet in Control Panel or Administrative Tools for 2000/XP machines. That

We will use MS Access for an example. Your results will differ slightly but establishing an OBDC data source involves launching the Data Source Administrator and then an 'Add' function. For standalone, single user databases you will probably want to use the User Data Sources tab. Clicking on the Add button activates a selector which is used to pick the driver for the database type of your database. Using MS Access as an example, there will be a choice for Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb). Select that and then click on Finish.

There will then be a dialog that lets you specify a Name to assign to the Data Source. You can specify anything you like here, so long as it is unique (be descriptive though). Likewise, Description can be anything. Then use the Database area of the dialog to select the actual database on disk that will be accessed. The Select button for the MS Access driver launches a picker you can use to navigate to the database of interest.

The screenshot below shows a completed dialog that set up D:\EXAMPLE\DBASE\NWIND1.MDB under the OBDC name NWIND1. Note that we could have assigned any data source name we wanted to D:\EXAMPLE\DBASE\NWIND1.MDB. NWIND1 just made sense.

Tip: To change an existing assignment, use the Configure or Modify button in the opening tab of the Data Source Administrator. You can highlight a data source and change the assignment to another database if you like.

To perform a comparison DBComp needs two OBDC data sources so repeat this process for your second database.

Now that you have two OBDC data sources available, make sure nothing is open in your database tool and launch DBComp.

Next you need to specify the data sources in DBComp. Click on the button as in the below:

And you'll get a Select Data Source dialog. Click on Machine Data Sources and highlight the database.

Repeat for the second database.

Click on Update to refresh the display.

Next specify the Data Difference Path. You need to specify a path only. Include the trailing \ character!

Make any other choices you need for the table dump files and then click on Process:

You can then open the difference file created in your text editor and do with it what you like.