I want to buy this product but I am having problems accessing the data.  I am looking for the best slution to my problem.  We have Quickbooks Pro 8 installed on 3 desktops (Windows XP Pro SP2) sharing the data on a file server.  We had to load QB software on the server as well, but I'm not sure why.  The server is Windows 2000 Server.

We want to export the data from QB into a Lotus Notes workflow application. 

So far we installed the QODBC drivers on one of the desktops to see if we can grab the data using VB Demo.  We are using this select statement:  Select * from Invoice

It has been 3 1/2 hours since starting the command and the count goes to over 7000 and then drops back to 0 and then back up to maybe 500 and then back to zero. 

Is this what's supposed to happen?  When is this bad boy going to be finished?  Does the server product go any faster and do I just install it on the file server where the QB data is installed?

Sounds like you have a lot of invoices! A:

select * from invoice

is going to optimize the invoice tables and then extract every invoice you have in your system. It might be easier to examine these records in smaller year by year chunks like this:

Select * from invoice calldirect where TxnDate >={d'2006-01-01'} and TxnDate <={d'2006-12-31'}

Select * from invoice calldirect where TxnDate >={d'2007-01-01'} and TxnDate <={d'2007-12-31'}

Select * from invoice calldirect where TxnDate >={d'2008-01-01'} and TxnDate <={d'2008-12-31'}

See: How do I setup the QODBC Optimizer? Where are the Optimizer options? for more information.

We only have 8700 invoices that span to 2003.  Once we cancel the query, all of the invoices appear.  Could this be because there are 2 other people in the database on their QB client updating data? 

How would the server version work?  Does it get installed on the file server or the Lotus Domino server if we had a Lotus app accessing the ODBC driver?

Thanks,

Quin

The QODBC Server Edition is required for applications that are, or call through, a Windows Service, like IIS, MS SQL Server, Lotus Domino and Coldfision. It's not a QODBC Server. QODBC talks to QuickBooks and QuickBooks talks to the company file. So you will also need to have QuickBooks installed on the Lotus Domino server if you require a Lotus app to access QuickBooks.

If other QuickBooks users are creating invoices while you are also exporting all the invoices, it certainly will impact performance. It's often easier to copy the company file to a another location and use the copy in single user mode to run off a series of complex reporting or export operations.