Database

Introduction to Database Connection

(Database connection is a feature of the Professional edition only)

In OCAD you can link objects to information in the database about this object. A database normally consists of several tables. In flat file databases like dBase, each table is a file. All tables in a folder form a database. In other databases like Access or in spreadsheet programs like Excel all tables of the database are in the same file. A table consists of records. A record contains the information about one OCAD object. A record consists of fields which contain the information. A special field is the key field. It normally contains a number to identify the record. To link an OCAD object to a record the number in the key field is stored in the object.

Dataset To connect to a table OCAD uses a dataset. The dataset contains the link to the database, the name of the table, the name of the key field and information about other special fields. You can have several datasets for the same OCAD map. To create a dataset choose Manage Database connection from the Database menu. You can access on databases via ODBC (Open Manage Database Connection). This is an interface to connect to all kind of databases.

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