Guidelines for using the DataServer

OpenEdge supports many capabilities not found in other database management systems, such as backward scrolling cursors and the ability to find the previous or last record in a table. The DataServer supports these and other programming and database features to ensure that your applications work with both OpenEdge databases and ODBC data sources.

The DataServer allows you to use OpenEdge database ABL features as extensions to your data source. Some of the OpenEdge ABL programming and OpenEdge database design techniques that you can implement on your ODBC data source using the DataServer are:

For access to some of these features, you might have to make minor modifications to how your ODBC data source or application is organized. For a discussion of these issues and instructions for modifying your data source, see Programming Considerations

If you create an ODBC data source from an existing OpenEdge database with the OpenEdge-to-ODBC migration utility and select the Create Extended ABL Objects option, you can use the FIND PREV/LAST statements in addition to taking advantage of OpenEdge-like cursor behavior. If you select Create Shadow Columns, you will have case-insensitive indexes within the resulting ODBC data source. For data sources where creating the extended ABL objects is not supported, the toggle box for this feature is disabled. For data sources where indexes are case-insensitive by default, the toggle box for creating shadow columns is disabled.

How you use the DataServer depends on whether you plan to access information in a data source through an OpenEdge application, migrate an OpenEdge database to an ODBC data source, or upgrade to the OpenEdge DataServer for ODBC. The following sections summarize what you must do and point you to the information you need in this manual.