Database

The provided database needs to be copied to your computer. If you wish to use the supplied web components you should copy the folder tristweb\ from the CD to a suitable location on your hard drive. If you do not require the web components, then the isolated TRIST.mdb file need only be copied over. Either method requires the following actions and considerations.

The files must be located in a folder without security permissions. If you use network drives, then the aforementioned files must be located only on local hard disks. IIS along with other web-servers are unable to host directories that are not part of local hard drives.

If you use windows User Accounts, especially those under 2000/XP then the folder you locate the files in must be accessible to all users. If you do not locate in a shared folder, other users on the network will be unable to view results. If you wish to use the web interface, the folder containing the web components needs to be set up as a virtual web directory. This is explained in the watch folder section later in the manual.

Recommendation: Create a new folder within the root of your local hard drive, i.e. C:\tristtool and copy the files to this folder.

Once the database has been copied over to your local disk, you need to adjust the properties to allow read\write access. When the database shell is copied to CD its properties are set to read-only, they must thus be changed back.

Once the database has been suitably located it must be set up as an ODBC data source. To do this, open the ODBC Manager. This is usually located in system tools from the program menu but can be found by searching for ‘odbcad32.exe’. On machines running Windows prior to 2000 the ODBC manager is located in ‘Control Panel’.

Firstly go to System DSN. The Dialog displays a list of existing Data Sources.

Click the ‘Add...’ button.

Select ‘Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)’ and click ‘Finish’.

This creates a connection. You go directly to the configuration dialog.

Enter the details of the connection.

The data source name is ‘TRIST’.

The description is optional but will help you to know what your looking at later on. in this example we have just filled in the full TRIST name.

Locate the database.

Click the Select button. Navigate to the location of the TRIST database. Click ‘OK’.

The finished dialog should look like the above example. At this point Click ‘OK’ to finish the set up of the ODBC connection.