Creating a connection with remote database using Cocoa

Question

How can I access a MS Access database from a remote server, which is on Windows platform, using Cocoa and objective-C on Mac OS X? The server is located in remote location and it can only be accessed over internet.

How can I make connection with server over internet? what all procedures to be used for making such applications? If I need to use ODBC, what all are the steps required to achieve a connection? I didn't find out any helpful documentations regarding these topics? Is there any frameworks to be used?

Thanks in advance

mahaboob

Answer 1

Well, since it's a MS Access file, you will need to setup a File Server on the remote machine. I guess you have already done that.

Now, since you have already ODBC installed on your Mac (I am assuming you have Mac OS X 10.2 or higher) you need a driver to open the MS Access file. You can find (buy, really) one here. Check this FAQ out also. It has some interesting stuff about ODBC on Mac OS.

Now you are ready to code. You can use ODBC API directly in Objective-C (after all, it's C!) or you can try some pure Objective-C wrappers like this one. I would definitely recommend to stick with the native ODBC API to avoid headaches related to bugs on Open Source or Freeware, unsupported wrappers you might find on the Internet.