From kde-devel  Tue May 04 17:04:24 1999
From: Peter Harvey <pharvey () codebydesign ! com>
Date: Tue, 04 May 1999 17:04:24 +0000
To: kde-devel
Subject: Re: Next generation of KOrganizer / Call for help: (fwd)
X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-devel&m=92583720511844

> I know what ODBC is, but could you please compile a small list of the
> differences between standard ODBC and unixODBC, or are they identical. If yes,
> I can think of several reasons why we should NOT use ODBC !
>

Yes. unixODBC is ODBC on UNIX/Linux. It even includes support for some MS extensions.

> Regular ODBC is not flexible enough. It is very difficult to write a small
> minimal driver since ODBC implementations have to implement all the
> functionality the spec requires.
>

Not true. One can write a driver which supports a subset of the functionality in the
ODBC spec (ie just a few funcs) and get by fine for the vast majority of uses. In
fact, I do not know of a driver which implements all of the 3.5.1 spec (if they are
out there then they are few and far between).


>
> Today, with LDAP, mail-databases, .... the common functionality is much smaller
> and more abstract as in ODBC.
>

Ok. But I can see an ODBC  Driver being created for LDAP but I can not see LDAP being
used for all db type functions.

>
> Mapping those non-SQL databases to ODBC is sometimes difficult or impossible.

You bet. Doing the Text File Driver, even to its current/preliminary stage was a big
job. However, this is the first ODBC File Driver to be LGPL so the stage is almost
ready for quick development of future file drivers. The final phase of the
unixODBC Text File driver is to make it into an example of how to use the
unixODBC infrastructure to create more file drivers (and, of course, server base
drivers).


>

Peter Harvey