Code Of The Week Issue #20 for Visual Basic

Visual Basic Code of the Week (COTW)
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Issue #20
All content and source code is Copyright (c) 1998 by C&D Programming Corp. None of the source can be reprinted in any manner without express written permission of C&D Programming Corp.

Requirements for this Issue

The source code in this issue is designed for Visual Basic 5.0 and higher. With some modifications to the parameters it can be used in VB 3 and 4.

In this Issue

This issue shows how to attach an external table to an Access database. This is useful for situations where you need to access tables in other Access databases or other database formats. We will show an example of how to attach a dBASE III type table. Doing the attachment allows you to access data using a query across multiple databases and database types.

AttachTable

Function AttachTable(DestDB As String, SrcDB As String, sTable As String, Optional sDBType as String) As Integer

Parameters

sDestDB - The destination database. This is where the attachment will be created. Example: C:\DATA\SALES.MDB
sSrcDB - The source database name. This is the database that contains the table to be attached. If you are attaching an Access table, this will contain the complete path and filename of the Access database, such as C:\DATA\SALES.MDB. If you are attaching a dBASE type table (where there is one table per database) this will only contain the complete path, such as C:\DATA. You would then set the sTable parameter to be equal to the filename, such as SALES. It is assumed that dBASE tables have a DBF extension.
sTable - The table name to be attached. This will be the name of the table as it appears in sSrcDB. It will be just the table name for Access type databases and the filename for the dBASE type databases.
sDBType - The type of database you are attaching. This is optional if you are just attaching Access tables. If you want to attach other database types, you need to use the appropriate database name. For example, dBASE 3 is dBASE III. Review the Connect Property in the Visual Basic Help File. It contains the complete listing of the available database types. Some additional examples are: Fox Pro 2.6, dBASE IV and Excel 5.0.

Return Value

None unless an error occurs. If an error occurs it will be raised to the caller. Some situations that this subroutine will fail are:

If the database you are trying to attach is not available.
If you are not allowed to delete a table/attachment that has the same name of the one you are trying to add.

Sample Usage

The below example uses the AttachTable to attach an Access table and a dBASE table. It is assumed that the dBASE tables are located in the directory C:\DATA

    On Error Resume Next

    ' Attach the OLDSALES.DBF table in the C:\DATA directory to C:\DATA\SALES.MDB
    AttachTable "C:\DATA\SALES.MDB", "C:\DATA", "OLDSALES", "dBASE III"
    If Err <> 0 Then
        MsgBox "Error: " & Err.Description
    End If

    ' Attach the Invoices table to REPORT.MDB from SALES.MDB
    AttachTable "C:\DATA\REPORT.MDB", "C:\DATA\SALES.MDB", "Invoices"
    If Err <> 0 Then
        MsgBox "Error: " & Err.Description
    End If

    ' Attach the Customer table to REPORT.MDB from SALES.MDB
    AttachTable "C:\DATA\REPORT.MDB", "C:\DATA\SALES.MDB", "Customers"
    If Err <> 0 Then
        MsgBox "Error: " & Err.Description
    End If

Source Code

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