Re: Re: BI / Reporting tools

Yeah, you're not understanding what I'm saying...

ODBC provides a standard API to access a RDBMS, but you're dependant on the
RDBMS vendor to provide an ODBC driver for your platform. The client side
interface is published, but the server side interface is unique to the
RDBMS.

IBM can't write an ODBC driver to connect to MS SQL Server for use on IBM
i, or z/OS. Microsoft would have to do so.

Whereas the "native" interface to DB2 is DRDA. Microsoft and Oracle both
created DRDA "drivers" (technically DRDA "clients" known as requesters) so
that there DB's can talk to IBM DB2.

Oracle actually went a step further, creating both the DRDA client and
Server. Once you install the Oracle Transparent gateway product, your IBM
i looks like an Oracle Server to Oracle DBs and your Oracle Server looks
like a DB2 DB to your i.

Charles


​

On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 1:34 PM, John Yeung <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 4:02 PM, Charles Wilt <charles.wilt@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

I'll give you one...applies to both OS/400 and IBM i..

It uses a published protocol for remote database communication (DRDA).

So anybody can write a driver to talk to it. In fact, both Oracle and
Microsoft have done so.

AFAIK, The reverse is (still) not true. The only way to talk to Oracle

or

MS SQL Server is through a driver provided by the vendor (or reverse
engineering said driver).

Hm. Maybe I'm not getting your full point. ODBC is a "published
protocol" (the 'O' in ODBC even stands for "open"). So I'm guessing
you mean more than what ODBC gives you, otherwise all major databases
would qualify as open in this sense.

I don't know much about DRDA, but from what I could gather through
Googling, DRDA may well be a "deeper" and more comprehensive thing
than ODBC. So I am not dismissing your point, I just don't have full
understanding yet.

John Y.
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