SNA OLE DB Management

Microsoft® Management Console (MMC) and MMC snap-ins are the current method of exposing administrative tasks and options in server-based Microsoft products. An MMC snap-in for the OLE DB Provider for AS/400 and VSAM is installed as part of the SNA client that allows configuring registry settings for accessing data files on AS/400 systems and mainframes. This SNA OLE DB Management Console snap-in allows configuring Data Sources and Data Descriptions. It is also used to configure default values for the OLE DB Provider for AS/400 and VSAM.

The SNA OLE DB Management Console snap-in contains two high-level objects: Data Sources and Data Descriptions.

• Data Sources in OLE DB are similar to Data Source Names (DSN) in ODBC. The data source information is stored on a local registry and contains the connection information required for the OLE DB Provider to access host files.
• Data Descriptions are stored in text (.HCD) files that contain the information required to convert host data types to PC data types.

The SNA OLE DB MMC snap-in is designed to run on Microsoft® Windows® 95 and Microsoft® Windows NT®. On Windows NT, the snap-in respects the Windows NT security hierarchy, where only privileged users can read and write to some areas of the system registry. To prevent general users from modifying the data sources and HCD files on Windows NT, the SNA OLE DB Management snap-in can only be run by users that have administrative privileges on the local computer.