Re: [gtk-list] Re: GNOME Database kit ODBC interface

[Ian McKellar <imckellar harvestroad com au>]

On Thu, Aug 06, 1998 at 10:31:01PM -0400, Elliot Lee wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Aug 1998, O'CONNOR, Steve wrote:
> 
> > STOP IT NOW ... 
> > 
> > ODBC is bad, bad, bad ... it is poison, dont use it.
> 
> You haven't given any reasons why not. It is flexible enough to meet
> database access needs, and it is not too complicated to prevent a
> knowledgeable programmer from writing up a "display a table of query
> results" program in a few minutes. Oh, and it's an industry standard. 

Having read the JDBC book and having spoken to people who've had to use it
it sounds pretty horrific.

And with industry standards: just because its an industry standard doesn't
mean its good - for example:
  Industry standard desktop OS:	    Windows9[58]
  Industry standard server OS:      WindowsNT
  Industry standard X11 Desktop:    CDE
  Industry standard X11 Toolkit:    Motif

If someone is going to be using GNOME then they're not going to be concerning
themselves with the "industry standard".
> 
> > All you need for a GNOME generic database interface is the following
> > collection of functions -
> > 
> > - result_set* execSQL (char *str);       where str is an SQL statement
> > to execute. Returns a result set *
> > - char* getValue (result_set *, int row, int column);
> 
> Your API does not allow binding variables to input parameters or result
> columns, doesn't allow multiple data sources, doesn't allow cursors,
> doesn't allow transactions, has screwed-up result reporting etc.  etc.
> etc. 

How about we rip off the API for JDBC, and implement it over CORBA. This
could work because:
  * the JDBC api is pretty good. 
  * it would be easy to write a Java 1.2 GDBC -> JDBC bridge, and hence use 
    the JDBC -> ODBC bridge.
  * virtually all significant database vendors have written JDBC drivers.
  * if we base our API on JDBC, then it would be easy for database vendors to
    rewrite their JDBC drivers for our GNOME standard.
  * JDBC is emering as an industry standard :)

Ian

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Ian McKellar           imckellar@harvestroad.com.au
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