OLE DB is an open specification designed to access data from both relational and non-relational data sources.
The DataEase implementation of a standard set of OLE DB interfaces enables your DataEase applications to seamlessly exchange data with such external OLE DB-enabled data sources as MS SQL Server, Oracle and MS Access, and with other DataEase applications (versions higher than DataEase v.5.x).
OLE DB consists of two software layers: the Provider and the Consumer. Stated briefly, the Provider allows other applications to access data from DataEase, and the Consumer allows DataEase to access information from other applications.
Each OLE DB Provider is specific to a data source. The Provider which ships with DataEase 7 is a COM-based driver that reads DataEase data in its native format and returns the data in tabular format to the Consumer, which can be any software which is OLE DB compliant.
Implementation of standard interfaces allows the DataEase OLE DB Consumer to access data from any OLE DB Provider.The Consumer processes the data exposed by the Provider and returns the data to your DataEase application in the native DataEase file format. You can easily incorporate this data into your existing forms or build new forms based on the tables from an external data source.
OLE DB lets you directly modify data in another DataEase application or read the live data without the need of intermediary files - Export and Import files. Export and Import files are needed only to transfer data to or from a particular location or for some other purposes. To access other DataEase applications, your best choice will be the DataEase OLE DB Provider.
DataEase 7 is provided both with an OLE DB data Provider and data Consumer.
OLE DB Provider: Summary
The Provider is a software layer that allows other products (e.g. Excel, Crystal Reports, Access) to read and modify DataEase tables. The provider is compatible with all databases in the DataEase tagged format, i.e. all versions since DFD5. So the Provider does work with DOS DataEase 5.The provider also allows for the processing of raw SQL against a DataEase native database.
OLE DB Consumer : Summary
An OLE DB Consumer is responsible for retrieving information from any external OLE DB - compliant data source. DataEase can use this information to create links to the tables in the external source, build DataEase forms upon the tables, and then to process the data largely as if it was in DataEases own files. The source can be any kind of data - relational or hierarchical, structured or flat, written in a standard or a proprietary format, as long as the source is equipped with an appropriate provider.
However it should be noted that the Consumer is not intended for creating complete applications over external data sources - DataEase is not intended as an alternative to specialized (and hence more complex) client server development environments. For the serious client server developer we provide our NetPlus suite of products.
In conjunction with the DataEase Provider, the Consumer permits DataEase to access native DataEase tables in a different application. This has a number of advantages. It allows for much more convenient data sharing between different DataEase applications (and so many imports and exports will be obsolete). In many cases this facility will permit large existing applications to be split into more manageable smaller ones, and also it will allow new development in DataEase to take place without disturbing existing working apps, at least when only some of the tables need to be used by both applications. Unlike interoperability, it promotes many smaller applications rather than heaping everything together in one huge complex system.