*BSD News Article 97598


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From: Steve Bernacki Jr <steve@zip1.ziplink.net>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD and ODBC Connectivity
Date: 11 Jun 1997 20:07:19 GMT
Organization: ziplink.net
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I've not used it extensively, but the unix SQL database engine "MySQL"
supports ODBC connectivity; there's even a Win95/NT client available
(works with M$ Access, etc.)   MySQL compiles fairly cleanly on a FreeBSD
box and seems to work quite nicely-- check it out :)

-S

Patrick M. Hausen <hausen@punkt.de> wrote:
> Paul Danckaert <pauld@umbc.edu> wrote in <5nm7ma$ls@umbc7.umbc.edu>...

> > I'm looking for a way of connecting a FreeBSD (or any Unix) machine to an
> > ODBC database to do standard queries, inserts, etc.  What sorts of public
> > domain or commercial solutions are there?

> Ahhh, that one again. I'm looking for exactly the same.
> I've been talking to a friend who develops on NT for a living
> (poor boy ;-) - he enlightened me about ODBC, which is rather
> closed despite the name.

> Possibly you are running into the same misunderstanding as I did,
> so I'll give everybody some hints on ODBC.

> The misunderstanding is: ODBC is _not_ a network or IPC interface.
> It's an API.

> Thus, you can program ODBC calls in a supported programming language
> on a supported OS with the database-vendor-supplied library.

> The point is, there simply is no ODBC interface to the outside.

> If you want to write an application using, say, Informix, with the
> client running on a Macintosh, then you need to get a Macintosh
> ODBC library from Informix. If they don't provide one - bad luck.

> The communication of the library (so called "ODBC driver") and the
> database server ist completely proprietary.

> A possible solution, we made up, is as follows:

> If your DB server OS is (e.g.) NT, then write an NT "service"
> (that's a daemon for the M$ impaired), that acts as an ODBC client
> to whatever database server is running on the NT machine.
> This service could provide a network interface to programs on
> arbitrary machines. Of course, that's not an easy task, because
> not only do you have to write the server, but you are in charge
> of designing the network protocol, too (runnig on top of TCP, of course).

> I've not yet seen a product implementing this.

> Patrick

--
Steve Bernacki, Jr. | Senior Systems/Networks Administrator
steve@ziplink.net   | Ziplink, LLC