Dave Martin from the North Dakota State University Student Loan Service Center has been kind enough to share his solution to integrating SAL and Microsoft's Access. Microsoft Access is a power yet simple database tool to perform custom reporting. SAL includes the ability to export much of the data contained inside our product. The integration of these tools is just right for many users information needs. If you have any questions about these instructions or how to make the most out of Microsoft Access, please feel free to contact Dave Martin via E-mail.

Getting Started
You must have access to the DataBase Dump facility in SAL to complete this process. You can find DataBase Dump in the Optional Modules menu. If you find that this option is not activated, please contact admin@ecsi.net. You must also have a copy of Microsoft's Access installed.

Each record that you export from SAL requires around 2100 bytes of disk storage. That means if you have 26,000 loans it would take approximately 54 megabytes of disk space for the export file. It will take a similar amount for the Access database. Make sure you have enough free space before you start.

In the ECSI Handbook, Appendix C - "Inbound/Outbound", you will find the record layout. I did not include all the items in the layout file. There following fields were not included: Borrower's Temporary Billing Address, Borrower's Employer, Borrower's Next of Kin, Borrower's References, Borrower's Spouse, Borrower's Emergency and Borrower's Bank. Also, the fields with dollars have been rounded to whole figures. I did this as the OUTBOUND.SEQ file shows a letter symbol as the last digit when there is cents. E.G., 34.34 would be 34.3E.

You must first download the empty Microsoft Access DataBase. To download, right click on the Microsoft Access DataBase and select "Save Target As" or "Save Link As". You can place this file anywhere. The copy you download should be saved as a backup.

First Time Instructions
The first time you use this Access database, you will need to follow a slightly different set of instructions. Access will remember some of your choices so you will be able to skip a few steps each subsequent run. Do the following ONE TIME -- This tells Access where your text (TXT) file is located.

1. Make a folder in the drive where you will store the Access outbound.mdb that you downloaded and the Database Dump you will create from SAL. We suggest a local hard disk as Access will perform much better. If you select a network drive, access will perform noticeably slower.
2. Copy the outbound.mdb file to the directory you created in Step 1.
3. Start SAL and run the DataBase Dump from the optional modules. It will create a file called outbound.seq.
4. Copy the outbound.seq file from the SAL-SYS directory to the directory you created in Step 1.
5. Rename the outbound.seq file so it has an extension of .txt. We suggest saloutbd.txt and will use this name for the remaining instructions.
6. Start Microsoft Access.
7. When Access is up, click on the "Open Database Folder" (yellow) and in the "Look in:" field, find the drive and folder you specified in Step 1. Highlight Outbound and press the Open button.
8. Click on "New", then click "Link Table", then press OK.
9. When the next window appears, look in the bottom left corner. You will see "Files of Type" with "Microsoft Access" in the pull down list. Click on the down arrow and select "Text Files" then, on the top of that window, click on "Link".
10. The next window is the "Link Text Wizard" window. Click "Advanced" and the "Link Specification" window will appear.
11. Click on "Specs.." then highlight "SALOUTBD Link Specification" and press the Open button.
12. Click on "Save as..." then click press OK. You are shown two windows, press "Yes" for the first and "OK" for the next.
13. On the next window, press the Finish button.
14. Your database is now ready to use.

Subsequent Instructions
From now on, every time you wish to populate your Access data with the latest copy of the information in SAL, you will follow these steps.

1. Start SAL and run the DataBase Dump from the optional modules.
2. Copy the outbound.seq file from your \SAL-SYS folder to the folder you created in "First Time Instructions", Step 1.
3. Rename the file outbound.seq to saloutbd.txt.
4. Your database is now ready to use.

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