well eric, i finally got the driver to work. it turns out that i was having trouble because i have a password on the database. fortunately i have a copy of the database without the password so i was able to get a connection. the error that i was getting with the database with the password on it was saying "can't start application. the workgroup information file is missing or opened exclusively by another user". anyway, using the driver did nothing. i'm still getting a 0 value for the generated id. just thought i would let you know. thanks for your past help.

piper