Connect to an ACT database

[alvechurchdata]

The ACT Contact management system used to use dbf files and I used to be able to pull data out of it. Does anyone know what data format is going to be used by ACT 2007? Sage sales staff won't say anything other than "more efficient" and I can't get technical information without buying a support contract.

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk

 

[DougHennig]

Hi Geoff.

Having created a version of Stonefield Query for ACT, I know how frustrating dealing with Sage can be.

ACT 2005 and later uses a locked-down version of MSDE for data storage. There are three ways to get at the data:

- Pay them a ransom (I think it's $400 per site) for the sa password to the server.

- Use the provided ACT OLE DB provider, which doesn't provide access to all tables.

- Use their .NET API, which does provide access to all tables, albeit in a goofy way.

Doug

 

[alvechurchdata]

Thanks Doug.

At the moment there are various people at the client with various stand-alone versions of ACT and they're thinking of upgrading to a corporate version for 2007. All they want me to do is to read the customer names and addresses from ACT into Fox so I hope the OLE DB driver will suffice.

Client has already paid out to get me a DLL and password that lets me poke invoices into Sage. That was a miserable job - the highlight was discovering that the parameters had to go across in order Comments3, Comments1, Comments2.

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk

 

[Mike Lewis]

Hey Doug,

Good to see you here before.

If you stick around, you'll see a few familiar faces.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[craigber]

Any way you can convince your customer to migrate to another product? I know that MarketWare (

http://www.marketware.us)

is written in VFP and can run on DBFs or SQL Server.

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual FoxPro MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com

Author, CrysDev: A Developer's Guide to Integrating Crystal Reports"

 

[alvechurchdata]

Any way you can convince your customer to migrate to another product?

Not a chance. All that's happened so far is that they've had a visit from an ACT salesman. I have to answer the question but I really can't see them paying out for the corporate ACT licence or for the little extras like a server and some training.

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk

 

[DougHennig]

Hi Geoff.

Yes, you can read from the contacts table using the ACT OLE DB provider. It's some of the other tables (particularly activities) that you can't.

Doug

 

[DougHennig]

Hi Mike.

Thanks. I've been lurking here for some time, but hadn't replied to any messages until this thread.

Doug

 

[alvechurchdata]

Yes, you can read from the contacts table using the ACT OLE DB provider

That's all I'll need - but I suppose we will still need to know the MSDE password to make the connection.

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk

 

[DougHennig]

Hi Geoff.

I'm at home so I don't have the details at hand, but if I recall, the provider needs to login using the same user name and password the user would use in ACT. So, just prompt the user for these values and pass them to the provider.

Doug

 

[alvechurchdata]

<quote>
the provider needs to login using the same user name and password the user would use in ACT
</quote>
That sounds quite straightforward. I'll give it a try if the client raises the topic again.

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk