How do I Create a new OfficeTalk Data Source

Symptoms

• An OfficeTalk client or server cannot connect to the main OfficeTalk database.
• There is no data source configured, or it is misconfigured.

More Info

IMPORTANT: This article contains information about editing the registry. Before you edit the registry, make sure you understand how to restore it if a problem occurs.

Summary

If, for some reason, the data source is missing or is not functioning correctly as a result of mis-configuration, it can be re-configured with the default settings using the procedure below.

Detail

Open Data Sources (ODBC) in Control Panel >> Administrative Tools
Click on the System DSN tab.

NB: Before creating a new data source and if you already have an ‘OTDB’ data source then please rename or delete the existing one. This may be removed by selecting the ‘OTDB’ data source, clicking on the Delete button and confirming this action. Or, the data source may be renamed by selecting the ‘OTDB’ data source, clicking on the configure button and changing the value in the Data source name textbox.

ASA Data Source

1. Click the Add button in System DSN. The Create New Data Source wizard will be displayed. Select ‘Adaptive Server Anywhere 9.0’ and click Finish.
2. Click the ODBC tab. In the Data source name textbox, enter OTDB (in upper case). OfficeTalk will expect a data source called ‘OTDB’ and will connect to it on start up.
3. Click on the Login Tab. In the User ID textbox enter dba (in lower case) and in the Password textbox enter sql (in lower case). These are the default credentials used to connect to an ASA database.
4. Click on the Database tab. In the ‘Server name’ textbox, enter OTDB (in upper case), ‘OTDB’ is the name of the ASA database server; ODBC will use this to connect to the OfficeTalk database. Please do not confuse this with the data source name. You may leave the other fields blank as the OfficeTalk database server only has one database.
5. Click on the Network tab. Set the TCP/IP checkbox. You will not normally need to enter anything in the textbox.
6. Select the ODBC tab once more and click the ‘Test Connection’ button. A ‘Connection successful’ MessageBox should be displayed. If anything else is displayed then there is a problem with the configuration, a network issue or a problem with the server. Please see The message ‘Connect to Adaptive Server Anywhere’ is displayed when opening OfficeTalk for possible resolutions.
7. Dismiss all dialogues by clicking OK.
8. If OfficeTalk still fails to start, check that the following registry setting is configured as shown for OfficeTalk to use the OTDB data source.

   HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareSoftalkOfficeTalkDatabasemainDSN="OTDB"

JET Data Source

1. Click the Add button in ‘System DSN’. The ‘Create New Data Source’ wizard will be displayed. Select ‘Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)’ and click Finish.
2. The’ODBC Microsoft Access Setup’ dialogue will be displayed. In the ‘Data source name’ textbox, enter OTDB (in upper case). OfficeTalk will expect a data-source called ‘OTDB’ and will connect to it on start up.
3. In the Database frame, click on the ‘Select…’ button. Navigate to the path of your database in the Select Database dialogue. If you are performing this action on the computer on which you first installed OfficeTalk (the OfficeTalk server), then the database’s default location is %systemdrive%otalk and the name is otdb.mdb. If you selected a different path when you originally ran setup you will need to refer to this location. If you are performing this action on an OfficeTalk client then you will need to navigate to ‘\SERVERotalk’ where SERVER is the NetBIOS hostname, DNS hostname or IP address of the OfficeTalk server computer and otalk is the share of the computer that represents the otalk folder. To navigate to a share on another computer you will need to type the name of the share and server in the database name field and then press the enter key. In the case of the example above you