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freetds - Re: [freetds] Win32 - ODBC Not OLEDB ?

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  • From: Peter Harvey <pharvey AT codebydesign.com>
  • To: freetds AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [freetds] Win32 - ODBC Not OLEDB ?
  • Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 13:46:35 -0800

Hmm. Maybe I should write something up for the www site, under
"Entertainment" or something, called "ODBC Considered Harmful". It would
save us both time, eh? :-)

I think there are too many people who comment negatively about ODBC with out really knowing enough about it.

Its not;

- for non-tabular data (some not-ported MS standards handle this)
- the fastest method to access data (use your db API for that)

Its good (or even great) at;

- providing a portable API (cross-database and cross-platform)
- leveraging an existing standard (arguably the most commomly used standard for accessing relational data)
- optionaly providing version mapping and driver plugabiliy via a driver manager

The main problem with ODBC for most people comes from poor drivers not from the ODBC standard itself.

Having said this I am VERY happy to see continued improvement of the FreeTDS ODBC driver and if someone decides to create the an OLE-DB compat. sub-system for Linux/UNIX then great. But lets not trample all over ODBC. :)

My fave thing about UNIX is how it leverages past work and is mostly based upon great standards. I dislike the way MS completely replaces "standard" after "standard".

Now if only there was a real effort to refine/improve the ODBC standard perhaps then more people would be happy with it and we can do a little less reinventing the wheel and a little more bullet-proofing.

Peter







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