Re: [MacPerl] Oracle access

[pvhp@forte.com (Peter Prymmer)]

Richard Christensen wrote:


> Believe it or not I did try the archive first.
> 
> I need to do a query to an oracle database on a VAX system from my Mac.  
> I ideal solution would have been to extract the data from Excel to Excel 
> using their ODBC "stuff" (sorry, I am not a database person).  I was told 
> by our desktop admins that MS didn't update the ODBC for Office 98 and 
> are several Oracle versions behind. Therefore, according to them I am SOL.
> 
> The question that is posed is:  Can I use MacPerl to access the database 
> and massage the data into tab-formatted data.  Please keep the 
> suggestions simple so that I can understand them.  I don't know what DBM, 
> etc mean.  Yes, the two computers are networked.  I can use fetch and 
> Mac320 to gain access, but I would like to automate the retrieval.

Mac320?  Is it a VT320 emulator?

At any rate DBM is usually used as an acronym for Data Base Management.
DBMS is a system, DBI is a database interface, DBD is a database driver.

The most elegant (read the hardest to port and configure) way to access 
Oracle via Perl is to use DBI and DBD::Oracle, which already runs on
VMS on the VAX and should also run under Ultrix (static linking) or BSD 
(dynamic should be possible) - BTW you didn't say which OS the VAX was 
running.  MacOS is another matter unfortunately:

According to the cpan testers page:
   
 http://www.perl.org/cpan-testers/results.cgi?request=dist&dist=DBI-1.06-bin-1-MacOS

The DBI both passes and fails under CFM68k style dynamic linking (???)
But according to the page at:

 http://pudge.net/cgi-bin/mmp.plx

The DBI (for PPC?) should be available from:

 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/CNANDOR/DBI-1.06-bin-1-MacOS.tar.gz

according to the page at:

 http://www.perl.org/cpan-testers/results.cgi?request=dist&dist=DBD-Oracle

The DBD::Oracle module is "Not Applicable" to MacOS PPC (???)

So that "elegant" solution is probably not yet ready for the Mac.

At any rate perhaps you can try running a canned SQL procedure remotely 
(it is possible to run rhsd and/or rexecd on a VAX) and then use the ftp 
capablilities of libnet or somesuch to retrieve the returned tables.
You do not need to have Fetch but can have the a networking module 
run things for you.  According to Paul Schinder's page at:

   http://www.clark.net/pub/schinder//MacPerl.html

The set up of libnet for ftp from MacPerl is straightforward.

Peter Prymmer



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