Sample Consumer Overview

The OLE DB sample consumer, SAMPCLNT.EXE, is a learning tool for application developers new to OLE DB. With it, you can learn about building OLE DB applications by displaying the code in the debugger. Although this application uses a simple interface to retrieve and log data, it demonstrates the general procedures that you need to follow to get data from an OLE DB provider that uses IOpenRowset as its only means of exposing data. This consumer uses the sample provider.

To run the sample consumer, click Start, point to Programs, point to OLE DB SDK, and click Sample Client For Text Provider.

Sample Consumer Features

The sample consumer is a console application that interacts with the OLE DB sample provider, SAMPPROV.DLL. SAMPCLNT.EXE reads the data in the rowset exposed by SAMPPROV.DLL and writes it to the log file, SAMPCLNT.OUT. The rowset is created over the entire data source, which is a comma-separated value file. SAMPCLNT.EXE uses the only command recognized by SAMPPROV.DLL, SELECT * FROM CUSTOMER.CSV, to request the data.

Sample Consumer Limitations

Here are some limitations in SAMPCLNT.EXE:

• The sample consumer exposes a limited amount of OLE DB functionality. The OLE DB interfaces, methods, and data structures used in this application are simple implementations, but they provide a simple framework that application designers can extend.
  
  
• SAMPCLNT.EXE can open only one file: CUSTOMER.CSV.
  
  
• All routines in SAMPCLNT.EXE use the same error-handling facility.