Primavera P6 Software Development KIt (SDK)

I am new to the whole P6 experience, just installed v8.2 myself. I used to use RA with P3 extensively, and therefor starting with P6 my first interest was on how to access the data 'throught the kitchen door'

I dont quite understand the intended concept behind what the call the SDK (Software Development kit). I did some setups on different machines with different settings, some with and some without the SDK. It seems to me that installing the SDK does nothing more but create a database alias to connect to an existing database - so where does Sortware Development come in? I achieved exactly the same by NOT installing the SDK, but create Data Connections through the Control Panel (in Windows 7: Control panel> Administrative Tools> Data Sources (ODBC)). I managed to then access the data from Excel by using ADODB.Connection & ADODB.Recordset objects in VBA.

I am using 3 Databases at the moment - 1 on my local machine, 1 on the server at my work site and 1 on our head office servers. I can read (and write) data to any of the 3 by changing the database name (or alias), with or without intalling the SDK.

To answe you question on the use of the SDK: the way I use it is by writing my own code in VBA. To do this you need some knowledge of Visual Basic Programming as well as a basic knowledge of using SQL.

Not knowing what your intentions are with this and how you want to use it, just keep in mind when writing your own code: Reading (SQL Select) is easy and safe, changing/updating (SQL Update) gets a bit more tricky and dangerous. Adding data (SQL Insert) is VERY dangerous.

Regards

Andre