Technical Information

This section of the manual is only for very curious technical people.

The program was written in PowerBuilder version 10, a programming environment from Sybase. The database that the data is stored in is embedded Firebird version 2 (starting with DONATION version 3.00). Some earlier versions of DONATION used earlier versions of PowerBuilder. Versions prior to version 3.00 used the Sybase SQL Anywhere or Adaptive Server Anywhere database.

If anyone is ambitious and wishes to access the data in the DONATION database directly, the definitions of the SQL tables in it are in the file TABLES.SQL. There is a login that you can use for read-only access to all of the tables, which is user name "public", password "public". There is an ODBC datasource set up on installation, called "DONATION_FB_READONLY", which uses this login.

Note: To use the DONATION_FB_READONLY datasource from other programs, you may first have to copy the three files icudt30.dll, icuin30.dll, and icuuc30.dll from the program's installation directory (normally C:\Program Files\Donation) to the Windows System directory (generally C:\Windows\System32).

The program itself uses the ODBC datasource "DONATION_FB", with a different user name and password, which I would prefer not to say because I do not want you to be modifying data other than by using the program! That is very likely to cause errors. If you feel a need to know that user name and password, contact me and you can try to convince me that I should tell you. A better way to make custom changes to the data, with my assistance, is by using the Database à SQL Select menu option.

Versions of this program between 2.40 and 2.70 used the ODBC datasources "DONATION4_DWC" and "DONATION4_DWC_READONLY". Versions of this program between 2.30 and 2.37 used the ODBC datasources "DONATION3_DWC" and "DONATION3_DWC_READONLY". Versions of this program between 2.20 and 2.29 used the ODBC datasources "DONATION2_DWC" and "DONATION2_DWC_READONLY". Versions of this program prior to 2.20 used the ODBC datasources "DONATION_DWC" and "DONATION_DWC_READONLY". If you are sure you will not need to go back to the older versions of the program, you can go into Control Panel's ODBC Administrator and delete these older datasources, if you are sure you know what you are doing. There is no need whatsoever to do this, however.

By the way, the reason I included "DWC" (my initials) in the earlier ODBC datasource names was to make sure they wouldn't match any other ODBC datasources, in case you have a previous donation-tracking program installed on your computer that also uses ODBC.