Re: Oracle and Access Integration

In article <34944023.DF28CCA_at_san.rr.com>, "Lane W. Sharman" <lane_at_san.rr.com> writes:

> So. Here is my current technical glitch. It appears that MS Access
> chokes on an Oracle date field if the value is null. If this is a known
> bug, I'd sure like to know about it now because it tempers my
> enthusiasm somewhat and concerns me that maybe there are
> some other Access/ODBC issues relating to Oracle I need to
> consider.

Define "chokes on". There are a number of cases where Access will not let you use a Null... giving you a MsgBox saying "Invalid use of Null"... not limited to Oracle dates.

However, Access also has an IsNull function so you can tell whether a field or variant-type variable is Null and avoid getting the dreaded MsgBox. In Access 95 and 97 there's also a built-in NZ function to return zero or some other specified value from a null variant.

There's a good discussion of client-server considerations in _Access 97 Developer's Guide_ by Litwin, Getz, and Gilbert, published by Sybex. It's not Oracle-specific, but many (most?) of the "issues" will be the same regardless of the DBMS.

I've not used it with Oracle, but have found Access a very satisfactory client for SQL Server, Informix, and SQL Anywhere. Received on Mon Dec 15 1997 - 00:00:00 CET