Is there anyone who can explain why when using ODBC to connect to FMP7, a
container field that I try to access is returns a VARCHAR type column with
the following data "?" for every row? I expected that it should return a
VARBINARY type column instead. The name of the driver I am using is the
"DataDirect SequeLink for ODBC 5.4". Any insight would be greatly
appreciated.

Regards,
Alex

Hi Alex,

Look for a PDF on filemakers site called fm7_odbc_jdbc_developer.pdf.
That will include alot of good info on FM ODBC.

Are you querying using something like MS Query, or another similar
tool, or are you using something like ADO or ADO.Net? If its a query
tool, it probably just won't display the binary data (Sql Server's
Enterprise manager displays <Long Binary data> in place of the actual
binary data, for example).

I'm not on 7 yet, but FM6 container fields were read only, if you are
planning on updating them via ODBC.

Andy

Im using ODBC from the .NET framework. Thanks for the info maybe the PDF
will clear things up

"Andy" <ajohnstone (AT) capcitypress (DOT) com> wrote

Alex,

I'm also using ODBC from the .Net framework.

Load the container field into a byte[ ] array field. At least, that
seems to work with FM6. ODBC and Filemaker don't seem to mix very
well, I'm having problems where FM doesn't return rows when it should,
and other times it tells me that a field I've selected doesn't exist
(and it does). The scary thing is that my program can process 100
rows, but 2 or 3 of them will have the 'field not found' error. All
100 rows use the same select clause..

Good luck, let me know if you need any more help.

Andy