Accounting for Men

How to Create an ODBC DSN to Access Pastel Accounting Company Data (Pervasive Workgroup)

It’s really easy to create and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) Data Source (DSN) to access your Pastel Accounting company data and this document will show you how.
BUT:
Be careful to use read-only mode because you can change data, (useful for data repair)
This procedure in this document is only for use with Pervasive Workgroup installations, (the same procedure on Pervasive Server has more steps)

1.Open Pervasive Control Centre

a.Accessing Pervasive Control Centre from the menu

i.From the Start menu, Select Programs -> Pervasive (If it isn’t there got to b.)

ii.From the Pervasive Menu, Select Pervasive.SQL -> Pervasive.SQL Control Centre.

b.Alternative: Access Pervasive Control Centre from the Run command

i.From the Start menu, Select Run.

ii.Type PCC.exe into the text box and click OK.

iii.The Pervasive Control Centre Opens

2.From the Engines node: Expand the computer node to see the Databases node.

3.Expand the Databases Node

4.Right Click the Databases folder to access Context Menu, Select New -> Database

5.The New Database Screen opens

6.Enter PASTELDEMO into the Database name Box and press Tab

7.When in the location field, click the ellipsis button to open the Browse for Folder Window
From the Browse for Folder screen, find and select the _Demo subfolder of your Pastel installation. (For your live data use the pastel company data directory, but follow along until you are clear on the procedure)

8.On the rest of the New Database Screen complete the fields as below.
a.Deselect Create dictionary files
b.Deselect Relational integrity enforced
c.Select Read Only from the Open mode dropdown

9.Click Finish to save the new database. The new database will appear as an expandable node below the Databases folder in PCC (Pervasive Control Centre).

10.Expand PASTELDEMO -> Expand Tables
you can see tables that Pastel uses to store its data (see list of tables and fields in other posts)

11.Double Click CustomerMaster table to view the data stored in the table.

When you Double Click the table it creates the SQL query -Select * from CustomerMaster-, which means -Select all columns from CustomerMaster-. You can see columns of data in the grid section.
To better understand what you are seeing, compare the grid data to the data in the Customers Explorer grid in the Pastel _Demo Company. Notice the -Ackerman Mr R’ in both programs.

Your Source Data in your Pastel Accounting Xpress/ Partner is now accessible.

Knowledgable microsoft Office users should be off to a flying start now in terms of creating refreshable spreadsheets and maile merge word documents. A few ideas for spreadheets would could be costing schedules for project type companies, commision spreadsheets for salepeople, picking slips and delivery schedules,

Mail merge documents are fantastic for sales orietated type tasks, especially when selection factors such as sales volume, territory, sales code etc. may be specified for sniper accuracy in offer targeting

I hope this article has stimulated your interest in leveraging your current Pastel accounting investment
In our next entry we will show you how to use this ODBC DSN that we have just created to access transaction information directly from Microsoft Excel.