grassieDgrace

It’s been years that I’ve been using Dreamweaver as part of my development in my ASP webpages and there is only one glitch that always gave me a headache, the database connectivity. I am quite sure that I’ve made a note of this resolution few years back but since I’ve got a memory-gap, this was misplaced somewhere. Now, I have to find it again at Adobe.com official website and it takes me an hour to locate the exact issue. With this experiences, I decided to post it here in my blog for future shortcomings…

ASP.NET issue: When using a local ASP.NET test server running on XP SP2 with Dreamweaver (i.e. the Testing Server URL prefix is set to “http://localhost”), database connectivity fails. If you click the Test button in the OLE DB Connection or SQL Server Connection dialog box, it says the connection was made successfully. However, if you then try to browse the tables in the Databases panel or in the DataSet dialog box, the database tables do not display.

ASP: When using a local ASP test server running on XP SP2 with Dreamweaver (i.e. the Testing Server URL prefix is set to “http://localhost”), and you specify “Using driver on testing server” or “Using DSN on testing server,” database connectivity fails. If you click the Test button in the Custom Connection String or Data Source Name (DSN) dialog box, it says the connection was made successfully. However, if you then try to browse the tables in the Databases panel or create a recordset, the database tables do not display or you get the following error message: “Unable to retrieve tables from this connection, click on the ‘Define…’ button to test this connection.”

Workaround: Download and install the Dreamweaver extension fix by Macromedia that resolves this issue (Ref. 179021). To use this extension, follow the steps below. The steps belowapply toboth ASP.NET and ASP sites:

1. In Dreamweaver, go to the Files panel and choose one of your ASP.NET site definitions.
2. Select Site > Advanced > Remove Connection Scripts.

Note: If this option is grayed out, open an ASP.NET page in Dreamweaver. Removing the connection scripts will delete the contents of the _mmServerScripts folder, which is located in the testing server folder. The _mmServerScripts folder is hidden in Dreamweaver’s Files panel, but will be visible if viewed with a different file browser. The _mmServerScripts folder consists of these three files: adojavas.inc, MMHTTPDB.asp and MMHTTPDB.js. The connection scripts are used by Dreamweaver to perform remote database connectivity when developing pages within Dreamweaver. These script files have no affect on your web pages during run-time (i.e. when a visitor views your ASP.NET pages via a web browser).
3. Repeat steps 1-2 for each of your ASP.NET site definitions.
4. Quit Dreamweaver.
5. Install the extension.
6. Restart Dreamweaver.
7. Go into the Files panel, select one of your ASP.NET sites, and open an .aspx file.
8. Go into the Databases panel and delete your existing database connections. Before deleting them, make sure to open up each connection and write down the settings. You can open a connection by either double-clicking the connection name, or right-clicking the connection name and selecting Edit.
9. Create a new database connection. Use the same connection names you had before, so any existing pages with DataSets and Server Behaviors still work correctly.
10. Click the Test button in the database connection dialog box. This will upload the new connection scripts to the testing server.
11. Repeat steps 7-10 for each of your Dreamweaver ASP.NET site definitions.

Note: This extension is compatible with Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Dreamweaver MX. The current version of the extension is 1.0.2. Version 1.0.1 resolved a database connectivity problem with the ASP VBScript server model. Version 1.0.2 includes the fixes in version 1.0.1 and also resolves compatibility issues with Dreamweaver MX (version 6). You can see which version of the extension you have by opening the Extension Manager.

Signed off
Graz