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Accessing Remote Data Using Views

You can access and retrieve information in remote data sources by creating remote views. Remote views are similar to local views except that you specify the name or connection name for a remote data source. This remote data source is typically an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) data source. Remote views use the SQL syntax of the remote data source.

The general process for accessing remote data using remote views appears as follows:

  1. Establish a working connection to a valid remote data source.

    A valid remote data source is typically a remote server for which you have installed an ODBC driver and set up an ODBC data source name. For more information, see How to: Set Up an ODBC Data Source.

  2. In Visual FoxPro, define the data source or a named connection to use when you create the view.

    You can define a connection to a data source and store the definition in a Visual FoxPro database so you can use the connection definition when you create a remote view. When you open the remote view, Visual FoxPro uses the named connection associated with the view to connect to the remote data source and request data from the remote data source.

  3. Create the remote view by selecting tables and fields you want to use from the remote data source.

  4. Set any properties that you want for the named connection to optimize the communication between Visual FoxPro and the remote data source.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Define Connections to Remote Data Sources

Concepts

View Creation

Other Resources

Creating Views

Working with Views (Visual FoxPro)