The Oracle ODBC driver story
in [Oracle]
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From: Mladen Gogala on 10 Jun 2010 21:44 What is the story with Oracle ODBC driver? Oracle is stubbornly shipping the driver that doesn't work with unixODBC shipped with the Red Hat distribution. I complained several times, never got any usable reply. The ODBC driver for Linux is still pretty much useless, unless you compile the newer version of unixODBC from the source. I will try getting it to work with iODBC driver manager, an alternative to unixODBC, but this is ridiculous. Even Red Hat acknowledged the problem but they are for some reason refusing to ship the new version of the driver. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=475615 Oracle is stubbornly shipping a non-functional driver. This is getting ridiculous. Don't they test their software? Maybe they have transcended the spiritual state in which they cared about the quality of their products and are quickly becoming a software equivalent of BP? -- http://mgogala.byethost5.com
From: Mladen Gogala on 10 Jun 2010 23:44 On Fri, 11 Jun 2010 01:44:44 +0000, Mladen Gogala wrote: > I will try getting it to > work with iODBC driver manager, an alternative to unixODBC, but this is > ridiculous. That doesn't work either. Turns out that iODBC needs unixODBC as a lower layer software to work properly. Basically, Oracle's ODBC driver on Linux is completely useless unless the unixODBC is compiled from source. -- http://mgogala.byethost5.com
From: John Hurley on 11 Jun 2010 09:19 Mladen: # What is the story with Oracle ODBC driver? Oracle is stubbornly shipping the driver that doesn't work with unixODBC shipped with the Red Hat distribution. I complained several times, never got any usable reply. Ok I am really not understanding you here ( as usual probably eh? ). AFAIK ODBC is a client technology and from a client machine you can use ODBC calls against a remote Oracle database. I think mostly Microsoft based software uses ODBC type calls ( not exactly sure ... maybe things like Delphi ... PowerBuilder ... etc may also use that stuff ). So you are talking about making ODBC calls from a linux machine? What kind of software does that exactly? Sorry to be dense here but all the significant development efforts I have seen over the last 10 years using the Oracle plumbing ( SQLNet whatever you want to call it ) stack and/or OCI stuff ... I kind of thought at this point the whole ODBC thing is a dying and/or outmoded set of technology. As far as "complaining several times" did you submit an SR and especially an SR with some kind of test case that demonstrates a repeatable failure?
From: Mladen Gogala on 11 Jun 2010 09:59 On Fri, 11 Jun 2010 06:19:27 -0700, John Hurley wrote: > So you are talking about making ODBC calls from a linux machine? What > kind of software does that exactly? http://www.unixodbc.org > > Sorry to be dense here but all the significant development efforts I > have seen over the last 10 years using the Oracle plumbing ( SQLNet > whatever you want to call it ) stack and/or OCI stuff ... I kind of > thought at this point the whole ODBC thing is a dying and/or outmoded > set of technology. There are many pieces of software that use ODBC. Microsoft tried killing it, in favor of ADO, but ODBC is still alive and well, even kicking a**. That sort of debate would be off topic here. > > As far as "complaining several times" did you submit an SR and > especially an SR with some kind of test case that demonstrates a > repeatable failure? To be very short: yes, I have. No resolution. The failure was acknowledged, but never resolved. Had you taken the time to read my post, you would have noticed a link to the Red Hat bug repository in which they do acknowledge the bug but essentially say "go ask oracle why are they shipping an incompatible driver". That is a verifiable fact. This is precisely what I am doing: asking here why is Oracle shipping an unusable driver? The course of events that lead me to this is the following: I am looking into an open source reporting engine called RLIB. This engine, as is the case with many open source products, has the native links toward MySQL and Postgres and uses ODBC links for all proprietary databases that they cannot distribute themselves. Oracle, obviously, belongs to the latter category. RLIB is an engine that can produce PDF and HTML reports, running in batch. It manages pages, groups, headers, footers and all of the other stuff that report engines do. It has Perl bindings, so it's easy for me to write scripts that will be executed by cron and produce a lot of pretty reports asked for by my management. RLIB doesn't have a native Oracle connection, it requires ODBC. I wasted my entire evening linking and configuring something that should have been packaged. The product is described here: http://rlib.sicompos.com See if you're smarter than me and can configure it to use Oracle without ODBC. -- http://mgogala.byethost5.com
From: joel garry on 11 Jun 2010 12:56
On Jun 11, 6:59 am, Mladen Gogala <gogala.mla...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, 11 Jun 2010 06:19:27 -0700, John Hurley wrote: > > So you are talking about making ODBC calls from a linux machine? What > > kind of software does that exactly? > > http://www.unixodbc.org > > > > > Sorry to be dense here but all the significant development efforts I > > have seen over the last 10 years using the Oracle plumbing ( SQLNet > > whatever you want to call it ) stack and/or OCI stuff ... I kind of > > thought at this point the whole ODBC thing is a dying and/or outmoded > > set of technology. > > There are many pieces of software that use ODBC. Microsoft tried killing > it, in favor of ADO, but ODBC is still alive and well, even kicking a**. > That sort of debate would be off topic here. > > > > > As far as "complaining several times" did you submit an SR and > > especially an SR with some kind of test case that demonstrates a > > repeatable failure? > > To be very short: yes, I have. No resolution. The failure was > acknowledged, but never resolved. Had you taken the time to read my post, > you would have noticed a link to the Red Hat bug repository in which they > do acknowledge the bug but essentially say "go ask oracle why are they > shipping an incompatible driver". That is a verifiable fact. This is > precisely what I am doing: asking here why is Oracle shipping an unusable > driver? > > The course of events that lead me to this is the following: I am looking > into an open source reporting engine called RLIB. This engine, as is the > case with many open source products, has the native links toward MySQL > and Postgres and uses ODBC links for all proprietary databases that they > cannot distribute themselves. Oracle, obviously, belongs to the latter > category. RLIB is an engine that can produce PDF and HTML reports, > running in batch. It manages pages, groups, headers, footers and all of > the other stuff that report engines do. It has Perl bindings, so it's > easy for me to write scripts that will be executed by cron and produce a > lot of pretty reports asked for by my management. RLIB doesn't have a > native Oracle connection, it requires ODBC. I wasted my entire evening > linking and configuring something that should have been packaged. The > product is described here:http://rlib.sicompos.com > See if you're smarter than me and can configure it to use Oracle without > ODBC. > > --http://mgogala.byethost5.com Why don't you ask Wim Coekaerts? I suppose you could have rlib talk to something else with native links that then talks to Oracle... or have a 10g intermediary... I'm assuming you are on some 11g? You mentioned compiling it from source? Isn't that the DIY way? jg -- @home.com is bogus. "You're listening to RDB on Bluesville." - Heard on satellite radio. Rockers Doing Blues. |