Setting Up Remote Data Services

To properly install Remote Data Services, you should read the information in the following sections:

Before You Run Setup

Before you install Remote Data Services, make sure that your client and server computers meet the minimum hardware and software requirements.

For the latest information on supported platforms and hardware and software requirements, see the Readme.txt file.

Hardware Requirements

To install Remote Data Services, you must meet certain hardware requirements, which include:

Software Requirements

Before you install Remote Data Services on a server computer, your server computer must meet the following software requirements:

To access Remote Data Services applications from client computers, client computers must meet the following software requirements:

Note Remote Data Services has not been tested with the Netscape browser technology.

To build client Web pages, you can use typical HTML authoring tools, such as Notepad or the more fully featured Microsoft ActiveX™ Control Pad. Some current data-aware controls are not fully integrated with the layout editor of the ActiveX Control Pad, but will still work correctly when the page is loaded in the browser.

To program server-side business objects, you can use any ActiveX/COM DLL-compatible tool, such as Microsoft Visual Basic® 5.0 or Microsoft Visual C++®.

Installing Remote Data Services

For Remote Data Services to work correctly, you should ensure that the Remote Data Services server and client components are installed correctly on server and client computers, respectively.

Installing Remote Data Services Server Components on Your Web Servers

You will install the Remote Data Services server components on your Web server computer, which should be running Windows NT Server. Setup assumes that your computer meets all of the software requirements.

Important Before you install Remote Data Services 1.5, you should uninstall previous versions of Remote Data Services on your computer. You can do this by using the Add/Remove Programs applet in Control Panel.

To install Remote Data Services server components

  1. From your Web server computer, connect to the Remote Data Services World Wide Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/adc/.

  2. Click the Download button, and scroll down to Download Files and Sites.

  3. Click Server and Help Files (msadc15.exe) to install the software, documentation, and core samples.

  4. Follow the Setup instructions on the screen.

The Setup program installs the program files to the <device>:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSADC directory. (This location is adjacent to other complementary Microsoft technologies such as ActiveX Data Objects and OLE DB.) The following subdirectories are created under the \MSADC directory with the setup program.

Subdirectory Description
..\MSADC\Doc Contains the documentation.
..\MSADC\Samples Contains the sample files.

The server installation program (msadc15.exe) also creates a Microsoft Internet Information Server virtual root on your Web server computer. The root is designated //<servername>/msadc and you can use to reference the physical file system from the browser.

Once you have followed this procedure to set up Remote Data Services on your Web server computer, you can validate your installation.

Installing Remote Data Services Client Components on Your Client Computers

Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 already includes the necessary Remote Data Services client components. Therefore, you don't need to include a cab file on your Web page because client computers will already have the Remote Data Services client component DLLs.

Validating Setup

You can use the ADCTest.asp sample application to validate your Remote Data Services installation.

To validate setup with ADCTest

  1. Start Internet Explorer, and enter the following address:

    http://servername/MSADC/Samples/adctest.asp

    where servername is the name of your Web server.

    This should display the Remote Data Services Query Page. You'll notice that the server, connection, and query information is already provided for you.

  2. Click the Run! button to execute the query.

    If the grid displays a resultset, your installation is correct.

If you run into any problems, review the setup instructions and see "Troubleshooting Remote Data Services" and "Other Remote Data Services Configuration Information."


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