[Zope] ODBC DA for unix coming?

Hannu Krosing hannu@trust.ee
Tue, 20 Jul 1999 20:54:33 +0300


Anthony Baxter wrote:
> 
> >>> "Christopher Petrilli" wrote
> > After some talking, I'd say our position vis a vis ODBC on UNIX is that it's
> > simply not a good solution for application servers.  ODBC real value lies in
> > the client side, and on Windows NT, where often it is the easiest (or only)
> > solution.  On UNIX, all database vendors ship native libraries (except
> > Microsoft, but don't go there ;-), which are substantially better choices.

How much of the vendors also support ANSI SQL CLI (which afaik is almost
the 
same as ODBC) ?

> > Some "swag" looks, ODBC for Oracle, for example, is 1/10th the performance
> > level of the native OCI level interface, so why would you use this in your
> > application server?
> 
> The other issue is simply that unless the vendor supplies an ODBC driver
> layer for your platform, you're still screwed.

Actually this is the main reason to use ODBC - the drivers are often not
by the 
DB vendor.

This seems to be currently the only way to to connect some
DB/ClientOS/ServerOS
combinations (using the 3-tier drivers from OpenLink or unixODBC's
ODBC-ODBC bridge)

> The only thing ODBC helps with is that you won't need to write a python
> DB-SIG compliant interface to a DB for which you have an ODBC driver.

It probably starts to pay off when you have 3-4 of them

> If you have some wierdo database that only provides an ODBC interface, then
> it will be useful - otherwise? meh.

Most emerging wierdo databases come with ODBC interfaces. 

> With the exception of DB2, almost every database I can think of has a
> mostly-portable DB-SIG compliant interface now.

For some reason the ZopeDA-s are still not for DB-SIG API but for
individual 
databases

> 
> Until the mxODBC license changes, that's also possibly an issue for people,
> too...

Probably true, but you are always free to write your own ??ODBC - it
would be 
extra neat to do it the other way - bolt an ODBC/mxODBC like interface
on 
DB-SIG API so we can get a good conformance test for DB-SIG in the
process ;) 

> 
> Anthony.
> 
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