This is a bit involved, so bear with me...

I'm (trying) to write a .NET application to connect to IDS. All software is on my Win2000 Pro SP2 laptop:
IDS 9.21
SDK 2.70.TC1
VS.NET beta 2
C#

IDS has been working happily and I've run the coledbp.sql script on the db.
Using the Informix supplied OLE DB provider, all I can get is read only access to tables in the DB. I've verified this simply a couple of ways:

1. In the VS.NET IDE, using the server explorer I have defined an OLE DB connection. I can select a table, open it in the IDE and scroll through it. If I try to update a value in a cell, I get the error "Cannot edit this cell" from the IDE.

2. I wrote a noddy C# program to simply update one row of the table. I get the following error:

XIX000: -217 Column(m) not found in any table in the query (or SLV is undefined).

(Column m is a red herring).

HOWEVER...
If I use the "Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC databases" along with an ODBC DSN to the DB, I can get read/write access to the table from the IDE.

BUT, I can't use that provider programatically (the IDE won't let be drop it onto my form): "OLE DB Provider for ODBC drivers cannot be used".

There seem to have been a number of posts vaguely related to OLE DB problems, but none seem to help me. Can anyone help?

A related issue is that I really want to have the application connect to Informix SE 7.23 on SCO OpenServer 5. Is OLE DB supposed to work with that?

Thanks
Michael