Talking to VB/access from mysql

[Anon]

I've got a sort of interesting pain in the ass project, if anyone can help please do. There is this VB app (SemBook) that my client makes and is used by Convention Brokers to keep track of hotel bookings in their area. He wants a web form that can take reservations for rooms. The problem is that SemBook can't act as a server because it may be on 56k and may not always be turned on. So they want me to make a system where they can post what rooms are available to my MySQL DB every 5 min or so. then I can display the options on a form. And they want me to keep requests for rooms in a seperate DB that they can access every five min or so. Should I use MyODBC and how easy is it for the programmers of SemBook to set up? Otherwise how can I give them their data upon request. They want me to export a tab-deliminated file and then they want to FTP it and parse it, but this sounds pretty kludgy. And Updates become complicated. NE advice?
thanx
J

[cheald]

I'm not too clear on what you're trying to do, but this is what I hear you saying:

You want to maintain a database that a VB program can periodically access and update, that can also be updated and accessed through a web interface.

Using a SQL language, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Pick a databse that VB has drivers for, and move from there. You'll just have to create interface scripts for it. The VB programmers will have to do the same in their program. IMO, it's not the greatest idea to do a FTP get and parse a tab-delimited file - rather, I'd suggest you just do a SQL connect and perform your transactions that way. It'll be faster, at any rate, and more structured.

[hanumani]

Yeah, the problem is that I am required to serve out of a linux box, so anything I use (I am planning to use Mysql) will require ODBC, I was wondering if you knew how easy it was to set up an odbc connection with mysql from within a VB program (not a seperate executable).