Re: [MacPerl] MacPerl and FileMaker via DBI?

[Thomas Wegner <toms_email@gmx.de>]

>On Sun, 12 Nov 2000 09:15:42 -0500 Chris Nandor <pudge@pobox.com> wrote:
>>  Well, in theory, DBD::ODBC could be made to work; I think FM Pro does
>>  ODBC now.
>
>Could please anybody clearly state whether FM Pro can access other ODBC
>databases or is *accessible* from other clients through ODBC.
>
>If I only knew the latter works I would risk some experiments.
>
>
>Axel

Hi Axel, Bruce, Chris, Roland,
Hi all,

I've played around a bit with DBD::ODBC in the past, i.e. I've tried 
to build it with MPW (it's an extension module, of course), but I 
failed. At least, I learned something about ODBC; the following is 
important (excerpt from ODBC.pm):

"1) ODBC Driver - the driver that the ODBC manager uses to connect 
and interact with the RDBMS.  It is DEFINITELY needed to connect to 
any database. For Win32, they are plentiful and installed with many 
applications. [...]

2) ODBC Driver Manager - the piece of software which interacts with 
the drivers for the application.  It "hides" some of the differences 
between the drivers (i.e. if a function call is not supported by a 
driver, it 'hides' that and informs the application that the call is 
not supported. DBD::ODBC needs this to talk to drivers.  Under Win32, 
it is built in to the OS.  Under Unix/Linux, in most cases, you will 
want to use freeODBC, unixODBC or iODBC.  iODBC is bundled with 
DBD::ODBC.

3) DBD::ODBC.  DBD::ODBC uses the driver manager to talk to the ODBC 
driver(s) on your system.  You need both a driver manager and driver 
installed and tested before working with DBD::ODBC.  "


Point 3 is crucial. As Chris stated, DBD::ODBC could be made to work 
-- if we could get all the needed parts. If you look into (or run) 
the Makefile.PL, you will see that one must specify an *ODBC Driver 
Manager*, i.e. the DBD::ODBC module needs to link with an *ODBC 
Driver Manager*.

I've compiled iODBC, the  *ODBC Driver Manager* that comes with 
DBD::ODBC, with success, but the Mac OS part is missing and therefore 
it's useless (without changes). This part must load a shared library, 
i.e. the *ODBC Driver*. This means, that one at least has to link 
against this shared lib / driver in the build process.

The question now is: Does FM Pro come with such a shared lib (the 
ODBC Driver) or a ODBC Driver/ODBC Driver Manager combination? I even 
don't own FM, so I can't answer this. But I assume, that these things 
aren't available to the public?  So there is no chance to write a 
*Perl* ODBC client for FM, I guess, and that's what I would be 
interested in.

It seems as if the state of ODBC on the Mac isn't great -- it's 
looking better for Win9x (or whatever they call it) :-P .

Btw, there is a "MacODBC.sit.hqx" SDK available from Apple's 
developer website. Does anybody know what this kit contains? I 
haven't looked at it yet.

Any comments are welcome.

Best regards

--Thomas



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