OK, here's some tips: make sure to specify that you're using ODBC (unless you want to use ADO, basically the same to the programmer but sometimes handles dates and such better). This presumes you have a system DSN set up. (Start > Settings > Control Panel > ODBC Data Sources (iirc)) Then the connect string is something like "dbi:odbc:DSN_NAME_HERE". Take it from one who knows: if you have ANY way to get around using access as a datastore, do so. Just an example: numbers aren't quoted, strings use the character "'", and dates use the character "#". Also, the access sql interface (jet) does not use standard wildcard characters, but odbc translates that for you, so you have to remember things like "% in the script but * in the program". Oh, and of course their equivalent to the 'LIMIT' clause most other databases use to specify "only give me the first N rows of a dataset" is "TOP". Non-standard. Buggy. Baaaaah. Hate hate hate hate access. If you can, just use MySQL on win32 (mysql.com). Free and _far far_ better...