ODBC and JDBC Guide

Chapter 3 | Installing FileMaker ODBC client drivers 17
If you want the SQL_C_CHAR text type to be interpreted by the driver as the SQL_C_WCHAR
text type, select the Treat text types as Unicode option.
For the Multi-byte text encoding option, select System (MacRoman) or select UTF-8. For
example, some applications such as Microsoft Excel may expect text to be encoded using
the System encoding, but web applications may expect text to be encoded using UTF-8
encoding. If the application expects a specific encoding but this option specifies a different
encoding, then the application may display some characters incorrectly. FileMaker supports
UTF-8 multi-byte characters consisting of up to three bytes.
1 Select the Describe text fields as long varchar option to correct issues with long field
values, such as fields that do not have a maximum length specified getting used for Microsoft
Word Mail Merge import, or field values in PHP applications that are longer than 255
characters.
1 If you want to create a log file for long-running queries, select the Save long-running
queries to a log file option, and enter the name for the log file. You can also change the
Long query time value.
Click Finish to save your data source information.
9. Review the information about your FileMaker DSN.
1 Click Test to verify that you have correctly configured the ODBC client driver to access the
FileMaker data source.
If you receive an error message, you can correct the connection information. You may also
need to check that the FileMaker database file is hosted and available, that the FileMaker
account specified uses a privilege set with the extended privilege Access via ODBC/JDBC,
and that the FileMaker Server or FileMaker Pro host application has been set up for sharing
via ODBC/JDBC.
1 Click Done to save your data source information.
Where to go from here
After you install and configure a client driver, you can construct and execute SQL queries to
access a FileMaker data source.
Client applications sometimes use different terminology for accessing a data source via ODBC.
Many applications have menu items with names such as Get external data or SQL query. Review
the documentation or Help that comes with your application for details.
For more information on using FileMaker as an ODBC data source, see chapter 4, “Using ODBC
to share FileMaker data.”