PRB: Cannot Update VFP Free Table Using FoxPro ODBC ISAM Drive

In systems that do not have MDAC 2.1 installed on them, when you use the FoxPro ODBC ISAM Driver (named "Microsoft FoxPro Driver(*.dbf)" in the ODBC Administrator) for 2.5 or 2.6 tables, it allows you to view the contents of a table created in Visual FoxPro. However, when you try to update or add new records, the following error message might appear:

The older ISAM driver is not able to accurately read the table header of the Visual FoxPro table. Visual FoxPro supplies additional information in the header of the table for links to a database container, which the older ISAM ODBC driver does not accommodate. Snapshot recordsets are updateable as long as the table is in 2.5 or 2.6 format.

Microsoft ships a separate Visual FoxPro ODBC driver that enables you to perform updates on all versions of Visual FoxPro tables, whether they are part of a database container (.dbc) or free tables (.dbf). You can get the Visual FoxPro ODBC Driver, as part of the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), by going to the following Web site:

This behavior is by design.

Microsoft Data Access Components version 2.1 replaces the ISAM driver with a stub that informs the user that "The Microsoft FoxPro driver is no longer supported, and has been replaced with the Microsoft Visual FoxPro driver". If an existing ODBC connection is used, the message "Could not find installable ISAM." appears.

You should only use the 2.5 or 2.6 FoxPro ODBC ISAM Driver with tables that were created with earlier versions of FoxPro (that is, before Visual FoxPro 3.0). It is preferable to use the Visual FoxPro driver.