Microsoft Data Link Error when using ODBC Driver

[DreamingEagle]

I am using the National Instruments ODBC driver provided with Lookout in conjunction with the Visual Basic Data Environment. I have created two system DNS using the Microsoft Data Source Administrator in Control Panel, one for a test area on my local drive and one for the production data out on the network. Test Connection succeed with the Citadel datatables on the local drive, but it fails with when directed to the network, generating the following error: Microsoft Data Link Error: Test connection failed because of an error in intializing provider. [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] The driver returned invalid (of failed to return) SQL_DRIVER_ODBC_VER: %s. It fails whether I specify a mapped path to the da
ta tables in the system DSN or use the UNC. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Greg Caesar]

The first thing to do is to triple-check all of your ODBC settings. The place for you to start is the NI article "Accessing Citadel Data from Visual Basic". To find the article, search "odbc basic" from www.ni.com or use the link below:

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/devzoneweb.nsf/opendoc?openagent&CB6C9197D7BFDBEE8625680800739C7B&cat=560B6A521CE7E008862567FA0066D5F6

If the problem continues after triple-checking the settings, then the problem may be a low-level issue with the odbc drivers on both machines. Goto www.microsoft.com/data/odbc and select the "download" link. A list of MDAC (Microsoft Data Access Components) drivers is available. Additionally, a program called "Component Checker" is available that lets you determine the version of your existing installation. Upda
te BOTH computers to a consistently new version of ODBC. (As a side note, upgrading to the latest Internet Explorer will also upgrade several of these DLLs).

Regards,
Greg