Using PJOLEDB with Provider=MS Remote (RDS)

[Shaun D. Burton]

I am writing a .NET windows application that needs to read task data from a
Project Plan stored in MS Project Server.

PJOLEDB.dll supplied with MS Project Pro / Project Server 2003 seems to only
support connections to server data when it is invoked locally on the server.
Since my application runs on a client PC elsewhere on the LAN, I decided to
try and use RDS by specifying

Provider=MS Remote;
Remote Provider=Microsoft.Project.OLEDB.11.0;

in my OLE connection string.

However - no matter what I try and do - I get an error message saying that
the webserver denied access to the remote handler. I have tried editing
C:\WINDOWS\msdfmap.ini on the server to allow all RDS connections, and have
also ensured that the IIS anonymous user account has access to the
appropriate DLL in System/Common Files/msadc ...

My only other thought maybe that my server specification is wrong ... (with
MS Remote typically you specify the server as http://servername or
http://servename.domain.com) I was wondering if I needed to specify the
virtual directory or even one of the login pages ?

Has anyone managed to get this to work or is it simply not possible (which
means I have to resort to connecting to SQL server directly, which I wanted
to avoid if at all possible) ?

Regards

Shaun Burton
IS Solutions Consultant
Alipro USA LLC

 

[Rod Gill]

Can't help with the OLEDB connection beyond what's in the pjoledb.htm file.
I just wanted to point out that the database structure for Project Server
will change completely in Project 2007 and oledb will not be supported
unless you use Project 2003 format.

Other alternative is to use PDS but that too disappears in 2007!

I use the database. In 2007 there is a separate reporting database, so just
redoing a few views will upgrade your code for 2007!

 

[Shaun Burton]

Rod

Thanks for your reply ... I don't think I have to worry about Project 2007
just yet - the customer in question still hasn't really gotten fully on-board
with Windows XP and Office 2003 yet ...

The reason I am using PJOLEDB is because the same application can also read
data from MPP files for non-Project Server users/projects using PJOLEDB. If I
could use PJOLEDB to talk to Project Server it means that I really only have
to replace my connection string - the rest of the code should function pretty
much as written regardless of the datasource.

Unfortunately, the PDS doesn't seem to have a method for simply returning
task information (unless I am missing something really obvious in the
documentation). I already use it to retrieve a list of projects that are
available, and will probably also need to use it to return SQL server
connection info too by the look of things, but the PDS methods beyond that
seem to be pretty much aimed at updating or creating information.

Shaun Burton
IS Solutions Consultant
Alipro USA LLC