Has there been any progress in allowing Forms to connect to an ODBC database for lookups?
I too think this would be an incredibly valuable addition to the next Forms release.
Not as of the most recent version (10.1 Update 3).
Hi All,
Please see my post where we solved this using ODBC and SQL linked server.
I have inserted a full list of instructions on how we did it. Hope this helps you too.
We are looking into this feature, can you give some sample for what drivers you want to connect with ODBC? And an use case will be better.
Would it be possible for Forms to take advantage of the DSN's configured in the ODBC Data Source Administrator on the Forms server itself? This would allow for a wide variety of possibilities rather than just ones that are built into the product.
Hi Blake, it is actually need to take advantage of the ODBC data sources configured in Windows on the Forms Server, but you will need to add that data source in Forms.
MySQL ODBC Driver (5.1) for us. It would be a HUGE improvement for us.
I can think of over 100 forms we could use internally with lookups to dozens of MySQL db's.
I have had an attempt of using linked server. See my previous post: https://answers.laserfiche.com/questions/109946/LF-Forms-linked-server-to-lookup-MySQL-data
I haven't had a response on getting linked servers to work. Not sure if you can help with this one Xiuhing?
Hi Grant, my colleague Rui has followed up your issue. The reason why linked server can't work is because Forms use SQL connection string to connect to the database and the linked server can't be connected use that format.
We use IBM DB2 ODBC drivers to connect to our ECM system and would like to pre-fill some fields in a variety of Forms based on the submitter's answers. For instance, an employee submitter enters an ID number, we would like to fill the form with his full name, birthdate, email, etc. It would save a lot of time for the submitter and also enforce data integrity.
We would love a Pervasive ODBC connection. We send service techs out and have them fill out a form for every call them do. Automatically connecting customer machine information / call information would save them a lot of typing.
We would like to see Topspeed ODBC drivers. This would allow us to fill in form fields, user enters Employee ID # and the name would auto fill or user enters Part ID # and description would be auto filled. This would make those fields fill with the exact data each time forcing the it to be correct. There would be no data entry errors in those autofilled fields, Typos are much more common on long description fields vs shorter ID # fields.