Re: ODBC Driver Manager Questions

[Rodrigo Moya Piernavieja <rmoya tsai es>]

Hi!

> Personally, I'd like to work on contributing toward making Gnome-DB work
> with either unixODBC or iODBC.  (The library API's are almost exactly
> alike.  It used to be that unixODBC had the added functions of ODBC ver.
> 3, but even that should be parallel by now.)  I would like to also add
> the Driver Manager ODBC Administration GUI components to unixODBC.
>
> In fact, it strikes me as a little disconcerting that Gnome-DB has iODBC
> as an installing component.  I haven't tried yet, but can one install
> Gnome-DB without the iODBC part being built and installed over whatever
> pre-existing ODBC Driver Manager there might be?  That could be damaging
> to someone with a pre-existing ODBC system configured.  If anything, I
> would think the iODBC stuff should be made optional.  Presently, I know
> that the MyODBC source's configure options include --with-iodbc for
> iODBC and --with-odbc for unixODBC.
>
> Anyway, I know my interests lie much more with pre ODBC than with the
> comprehensive scope of Gnome-DB, but I'd like to make some contributions
> to unixODBC and Gnome, and I'd like for those contributions to be easily
> integrated with Gnome-DB.
>

That's one of the things that needed to be changed, specially since Daniel
Horak (who is making the spec files for GNOME-DB) found conflict problems
with the ODBC RPMs. What do you think about still providing a default
ODBC implementation (along with the postgres ODBC driver) in case none is
installed? or should we do as with the other servers (no client libs, no
GDA provider)?

Apart from adapting the source files/Makefiles to the different ODBC
implementations, I was thinking on rewriting the ODBC provider, which was
the first one to be added, and is completely messed. If you want to do
this, you can use the template files (in gda-dev/templates) to start and
then fill in the gaps, although these templates have been only partially
tested. But it shouldn't be too hard. If you do this, remember to contact
me before you start with the schema implementations, since there is missing
code in the template files about this. I don't recommend you to just patch
the current sources, it can be a nightmare.

If you want to help on the ODBC manager GUI, you can also help us. Stephan
Heinze (<stephan.heinze@xcom.de>) was thinking something about the GNOME-DB
administration tool. What I think mysef is that we provide a shared library
for each provider containing the implementation of a widget which is to be
displayed in the gda-mgr tool. Having a widget interface would allow you to
make an ODBC-only admin tool to contribute to the ODBC project as you said
by just inserting this widget in another app. The widget for each provider
will display all the available options for the underlying database, as the
ODBC manager applet on Windows do.

>
> Also, I noticed on an earlier e-mail that someone was talking about
> setting up RPMs.  I just got my copy of "Maximum RPM" and have created
> RPMs for a couple packages (unixODBC, freeodbc++ and MyODBC) and would
> be willing to get involved in the RPM preparation.
>

Get in contact with Daniel Horak. He is right now making the spec file for
the core, that is, the client libs and apps. Then, there will be a RPM for
each provider. The ODBC provider RPM should know whether iODBC or unixodbc
are installed, as the others.

>
> P.S. One install question.  The downloads page mentions a need for
> gnome-print and gnome-print-devel, but I can't seem to locate these
> anywhere.  Just a tarball dated sometime in 1998.  Am I missing
> something?

There is an up-to-date version in http://rpmfind.net/. Go to 'Package by
Name', get the latest version (which is gnome-print[-devel]-0_10-1mdk).
They are made for Mandrake, but work perfectly on RedHat 6.0.

Cheers