Re: Total ODBC Confusion

In article <86q4rh$ldv$1_at_nnrp1.deja.com>,   coakleyj_at_hotmail.com wrote:
> Hi everybody.
> 1) What determines if an IDE allows ODBC or not? For example,
> MS ACCESS and VB support it directly - Oracle Developer has an
> OCA layer for converting Oracle SQL calls into ODBC calls - but can
> I write ODBC calls directly within Oracle Forms for example?

An IDE will support ODBC if the developers decided to implement the ODBC interface in it. The OCA layer you speak of will translate Oracle Call Interface (low level Oracle interface) calls into ODBC calls. You could make ODBC calls directly in Forms if you can manage to use the Foriegn Function interface to call the API's directly. Not sure on this because I think some of them require complex parameters (i.e. structures and/or pointers to same).

>
> 2) ODBC driver managers exist for Unix (which was a surprise to me - I
> had always taken it to be Windows only). So if I install such
> a piece of software on my Unix server, can I then start writing
> applications that are ODBC compliant?

Yes indeed. This is 100% correct. The difference is that the API is then implemented by the driver manager and not by the OS.

>
> 3) Can all programming languages make ODBC calls - Say I'm developing
> a C application on Unix, can I directly write ODBC calls, or use
> some sort of pre-compiler technology?

On Windows, any application that can call a Windows API function (basically a C function with a stdcall stackframe) can do it. There are (interestingly enough) a few ODBC precompilers (but none free I have seen). These would work much like the Oracle precompilers, but they generate ODBC API calls (for 'C' usually).

> 4) People talk about MS Visual C++ and how it supports a c++ ODBC API
> (presumably different from the standard ODBC API)? Why does it support
> a different standard? Does this answer my previous question?

It isn't a 'different' API. VC++ includes a batch of MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) that implement a C++ wrapper set for the ODBC API. These extend the functionality and make it more C++ friendly, but underneath they are ultimately making ODBC API calls.

> 5) Oracle Application Server included an ODBC cartridge. What exactly
> does this cartridge allow one to do? Can I now make ODBC calls
> from within my PL/SQL, Java cartridges? I'm confused? If my OAS sits
> on an NT platform, I already have ODBC software - so what does
> the OAS ODBC cartridge add to the picture?

This one I have to duck on, I never played with the OAS ODBC cartridge and really can't speak for what it allowed.

-cheers
 DW

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Before you buy. Received on Thu Jan 27 2000 - 13:57:19 CST