Rapidly Develop FormSite-Driven Apps with Active Query Builder

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Leverage the Active Query Builder SQL interface and .NET data access to create data-driven WinForms and ASP.NET apps backed by FormSite.

Write standard .NET to expose FormSite data through an SQL interface: Active Query Builder helps developers write SQL interfaces; the CData ODBC Driver for FormSite enables standards-based access to FormSite. This integration uses the Microsoft ADO.NET Provider for ODBC as a bridge between the ODBC Driver and the Active Query Builder objects to build a visual SQL composer.

Connect to FormSite as an ODBC Data Source

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the FormSite Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\FormSite.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for FormSite (see below).

FormSite API Profile Settings

Log into your Formsite account and visit the Admin Portal to generate or retrieve your API key. Your

ServerNumber
is the numeric part of your server URL and
UserDirectory
is your account's directory path.

Use SQL to Interact with FormSite

Follow the steps below to create a WinForms visual query builder.

  1. Open Active Query Builder for .NET WinForms.
  2. In the new Windows Forms project go to the "File" menu and click "Connect..."
  3. Under Database Connections, click "Add..."
  4. Set your desired Connection Name (e.g. CData FormSite), set Connection Type to "ODBC" and locate your previously configured DSN in the "User/System" DSN dropdown.
  5. Click "OK" to save the new connection.
  6. Back in the Database Connection wizard, select the newly created connection and click "OK."
  7. Click "File" > "New Query" to create a QueryBuilder

You can now build queries visually: Double-click a table in the Columns Pane Area and an entity/relationship diagram is displayed in the Query Building Area. Columns that you select in the diagram are added to the query.

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from FormSite with the API Driver

Connect to FormSite