How To Distribute RDS Client with Visual Basic Setup Wizard (176874)

SUMMARY

This article describes the steps to distribute the Remote Data Service (RDS) client files with a Visual Basic 5.0 application.

Starting with Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) 2.0, RDS has been incorporated into the Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects. RDS is now known as A Web Data Access Feature of ActiveX Data Objects.

All of the Microsoft Data Access Components are contained in a single redistributable, MDAC_TYP.EXE.

To ensure that your RDS clients have the RDS components, you should redistribute the proper version of the MDAC.

You can download the latest version of MDAC at the following Microsoft Web site:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/dataaccess

Note that MDAC 1.5 is no longer available for download.

Once you've downloaded MDAC_TYP.EXE, you have two options for redistributing it:

Include MDAC_TYP.EXE in your setup program.

For more information on distributing MDAC_TYP.EXE in your Setup program, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
184265 How To Distribute ADO with the Application Setup Wizard
Run the MDAC_TYP.EXE as a standalone program. Note that DCOM must be installed before MDAC is installed. While Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 98 have DCOM built in, you should ensure that your Windows 95 clients have installed DCOM before installing MDAC. You can download the DCOM95 redistributable from the following site:
http://www.microsoft.com/com
Note that DCOM95 must be run as a standalone program. You cannot include it in your Setup program.

MORE INFORMATION

Step One

Build the Test Visual Basic application. Assume that you are building this application on a computer that already has the proper RDS client files installed.

Start a new Standard EXE project. Form1 is created by default.
From the Project menu, select References, and then select Microsoft Remote Data Services Library.
Add two CommandButtons to Form1, named Command1, and Command2 by default.

Paste the following code into the General Declarations section of Form1:

Note You must change Username=<username> and PWD=<strong password> to the correct values before you run this code. Make sure that Username has the appropriate permissions to perform this operation on the database.

   Private Sub Command1_Click()
   'DataControl
   MousePointer = vbArrowHourglass
   Dim dc As New RDS.DataControl
   dc.Connect = "dsn=pubs;Username=<username>;PWD=<strong password>;"  'dsn should be a system dsn
   dc.SQL = "select * from authors"
   dc.Server = "http://ServerXXXX"
   dc.ExecuteOptions = adcExecAsync
   dc.Refresh

   While dc.ReadyState = 2
   DoEvents 'user has control during async query
   Wend
   MousePointer = vbDefault
   MsgBox dc.Recordset.Fields(0).Value
   End Sub

   Private Sub Command2_Click()
   'DataSpace, DataFactory
   MousePointer = vbArrowHourglass
   Dim ds As New RDS.DataSpace
   Dim df, rs
   Set df = ds.CreateObject("RDSServer.DataFactory",
   "http://ServerXXXX")
   Set rs = df.Query("dsn=pubs;Username=<username>;PWD=<strong password>;", "select * from authors")
   MsgBox rs.Fields(0).Value
   MousePointer = vbDefault
   End Sub

Change the Server, SQL, and Connect strings to match actual servers you will be testing against.
Save the project.
Run the project and test its functionality against your server to verify that it works. If it does not work at this time, do not continue to Step Two below until you have figured out what is wrong. The RDS documentation, Readme.txt, and other Microsoft Knowledge Base articles will help you debug RDS configuration problems.

Step Two

Build the distributable application using the Visual Basic Application Setup Wizard.