Message-Id: <200010301144.e9UBi0277664@mail.postgresql.org>
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 12:33:12 +0100
From: Maarten Boekhold <Maarten.Boekhold@reuters.com>
Subject: Re: confused about *nix ODBC drivers
To: pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org
Cc: Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu>,
	Frank Joerdens <frank@joerdens.de>
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>> I am rather confused: There is unixODBC, the iODBC manager and
FreeODBC,
>> the latter of which provides an ftp link to "the latest" PostgreSQL
ODBC
>> at ftp.informika.ru, which turns out to be dated from 1998. There is
>> also an ODBC driver included with the sources.
>
>iODBC is a driver manager; on Linux I use it to connect Applix to
>PostgreSQL via the psqlODBC driver included with the PostgreSQL sources.

Just trying to clear some stuff up:

Your application uses ODBC calls, therefore it needs to link to an ODBC
driver manager. iODBC is an example of this.

iODBC is a library that provides your application with the ODBC functions.
When establishing a database connection you tell it a Data Source Name
(DSN). The iODBC library will look in a file (~/.odbc for example) which
contains a list of mappings between these DSN's and database specific
libraries. These database specific libraries just provide a mapping
between ODBC calls and native database calls.

The ODBC driver that comes with the postgresql source is an example of
such a database specific library.

The Openlink drivers are actually not that expensive if you compare them
with other 3th party ODBC drivers for UNIX, but I agree that for personal
use it's a lot of money.

Openlink *does* allow you to download an evaluation copy of the multi-tier
Universal Data Access set (that's the only one that works on UNIX, the
single-tier editon is only available for windows platforms).

Even if you use Openlink, you would need a separate driver manager. They
actually recommend iODBC.

Hope this information helped (maybe FAQ material?).

Maarten


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