Hi,


this is to announce that a proper ODBC infrastructure is
now available within the kdesupport package. It enables to
make use of SQL databases in a vendor neutral way.


ODBC (Open database Connectivity) is popular data access
interface under Windows.

The ODBC data access interface is implemented by ODBC Drivers,
the components responsible for backend database connectivity.
These are available from a variety of (both freeware and
commercial) database vendors and third party data access
middleware vendors.

At runtime these are loaded dynamically by an ODBC Driver
Manager, which is the library finally linked with the application
programs. By this way, the applications become independent
of the vendor specific drivers.

Since the ODBC API was defined in time when Pascal was the
language of choice in PC system programming, so it has a now
obsolete, pascaloid style. For this reason it not advisable to use
the ODBC API directly, especially not when coding in C++. To
this end, an adaptor library is necessary.


As the result, kdesupport now mirrors (parts of) the
the following libraries:

- iodbc <http://www.iodbc.org>

  an ODBC driver manager by Ke Jin, now maintained
  by Patrick van Kleef from OpenLink Software.

- unixODBC <http://www.unixodbc.org>

  an ODBC driver manager by Peter Harvey, rewritten
  and now maintained by Nick Gorham from Easysoft.

- libodbc++ <http://orcane.net/freeodbc++>

  a C++ library implementation of the Java Database
  Connectivity API (JDBC) by Manush Dodunekov.


All of these components are Open Source and LGPL based.

You'll find some more informations about drivers and
configuration following the above links.

As described above, the libodbc++ library provides the
interface, that is intended to be used in KDE programs.

To emphasize a peculiarity of the release, two different
ODBC Driver Manager libraries are now contained in kdesupport,
where only one is needed. I belief that this unusual construction
is advantageous for all projects dealing with it. Most likely,
before KDE 2.0 goes life, we have to drop one of the dms, though.

The state of both dms is that they support ODBC API about
Vers 2.5. Both projects are working on threads and ODBC
Vers 3.0 support and on 3.0 call translation for 2.5 drivers.


As a short term road map for the KDE 2.0 release, an ODBC
configuration program has to be made (to hook into kcontrol),
as well as a database browser/editor/query tool, at least.
Perhaps, one will contribute some database support to koffice
application, too.

On the longer term, an integration between the ODBC API and
the world of distributed objects will be of interest. There already
exist two projects dealing with it:

- The Gnome Data Access (GDA)
  <http://www.lausch.at/gda/gda.html>

- The KDE Application Server
  <http://dutiem.twi.tudelft.nl/projects/visions/kappsrv-wp.html>


I hope that the current integration of the ODBC libraries will both
simplify the production of database clients in KDE and the use of
Linux system in office environments.


Lars