Re: [MacPerl] Database Connectivity

[Richard Gordon <maccgi@bellsouth.net>]

At 09:38 +0100 5/4/1999, Kevin Diffily wrote:
>Please no flames.  I am at the beginning stages of trying to figure 
>out a way to  connect Macintosh Clients to SQL Servers run on Unix 
>Systems and it seems as if there are not a lot of OBDC Drivers 
>available for the Mac.
>I have come up with a couple of possibilities both relying on 
>Macperl DBI connections:
>A) A Macperl based GUI Client to access the Server.
>B) A Database Client (Filemaker or 4D) interacting with Macperl 
>interacting with the Server.
>Constructive criticism please.

I suppose that the best solution would depend on what kind of 
database system you are trying to work with, i.e., is it primarily a 
reporting system or is it more of a data entry system? If the actual 
usage is mainly running queries to generate lists or summaries, I'd 
consider a web browser interface altho that can be a pain if you are 
also going to have to print a lot of stuff.

If it is more of a data entry system, you could do something with a 
browser, but the connection is stateless so there are all kinds of 
problems with record locking, etc., that would be best handled 
otherwise. I don't know about current versions of 4D, but would think 
that FileMaker would be awful as a front end for this system if you 
were trying to use MacPerl as middleware mainly because it 
(FileMaker) is too slow in batch operations and I guess you'd wind up 
having local subsets of the data files that would never be in synch 
with one another. I haven't kept up with it lately, but understand 
that FMP's support for live SQL via ODBC is being upgraded 
considerably and think that there is some beta stuff at 
www.filemaker.com that you might want to look at.


Richard Gordon
--------------------
Gordon Consulting & Design
Database Design/Scripting Languages
mailto://maccgi@bellsouth.net
770.565.8267

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