Date: 29/7/2003
| Recently I had to setup a link between a MYOB system and an Access database (Yeah yeah my misfortune).
To do this, MYOB provide an ODBC driver. Which costs $260 (why I don't know, it's not worth that even IF it worked). And to my delight doesn't work. So you shell out the dosh, get the key to unlock the software and try and install the drivers. Frustratingly they for the most part crash the 32bit ODBC control panel applet everytime you try and enter the key. This I discover by trail and error is because someone has the MYOB file open. Ok overlooking the bad form of crashing when the wind was blowing the wrong way I forge ahead. The next issue is an error dialog trying to connect to the DSN from Access, and is classic bad form it gives you a numeric error number and nothing else. Great I think... who knows what the error number means? So I start looking for a MYOB support number. And you guessed it, they charge support at $4.50 per minute, with a minimum charge of $22. *sigh*
So being the canny programmer that I am I look up the windows error message for the error number I have on the off chance it's a windows error. GetLastError says it would be "DLL not found". This sounds pausable so I track through the registry, find the DLL associated with the DSN and go and look at the DLL. Using the file viewer in '9x I work out which DLL's the MYOB ODBC DLL links to. And to my disgust one of the DLL's that it requires is MSVCRTD.DLL which only comes with Microsoft Visual C++ as a debugging component and is not present in any base Windows install since 3.1. Thus the product couldn't possibly work on a clean install of Windows. So these MYOB mob have released a $260 product that can not work fullstop. Wow! Thats pretty impressive, and people trust this company to manage their finance? Yeah pretty scary if you ask me.
After all that I got the DLL off the net, installed it in the path and tried again. This time I get a different and still cryptic error number and no GetLastError message lookup is going to help me this time.
So the link still doesn't work. And I've given up trying. Stay away from MYOB, esp if your in I.T.
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