Richard JE Cooke

How to connect Visual Studio 2013 to Intersystems Caché through ODBC

Update: Don't use the ODBC driver. We later found it to be buggy. Use the native Cache.Data.dll driver for ADO.NET instead.

1. Install the 32 bit driver: cache.2014.1.0.ODBCDriver_x86.exe
2. Start menu - administrative tools - ODBC data sources 32 bit - system DSN - AddChoose Intersystems ODBC or 35 (the 35 is just a 3.5 ODBC version and will use 2.5 protocol where necessary, so it makes no difference):
3. Enter your database details and save after testing the connection:
4. In Visual Studio open your web.config file and add:

    <configuration>
      <connectionStrings>
        <add name="MyConnection" connectionString="Dsn=Cach" providerName="System.Data.Odbc"/>
      </connectionStrings>

5. Browse to the database Server Explorer and secondary click to run a new query:

SSMS fails

Unfortunately connecting to SQL Server Management Studio is not as easy.  Neither the 32 bit nor 64 bit connections work and allow me to run queries.  I've posted a Stackoverflow.com question about the problem here.