RE: ODBC FROM iSeries - huh?

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: John Taylor
>
> Based upon the post that I extracted your statement from, I think you
> understand perfectly well. :-)  As you've already stated, ODBC drivers are
> not portable across OS's. But that is not the same thing as
> saying that SQL isn't portable.

Honestly, John, I'm just getting my arms around the whole ODBC concept.  I
often type these posts as I think them through - that last one on OS/DBMS
combinations was a case in point.  I was insulated from the whole issue by
the JDBC concept, but it's important that I understand all the
ramifications, so I spewed out my limited knowledge to see exactly how close
my thoughts are to reality.  It seems to me that on a portability scale,
Java > SQL > RPG.  RPG requires a compiler, while SQL only requires a driver
for each DBMS.  Java beats them all because it only requires a single JVM
per platform (and the chances are that the JVM is available, whereas the
ODBC drivers are pretty much at the whim of the DBMS provider or some third
party).

Back to Walden's original counterpoint, unlike Java, ODBC is seemingly *NOT*
very well supported on OS/400.  In my admittedly cursory investigation, I've
found very few native ODBC drivers for OS/400.  So it's hard to access
non-DB2 data from an iSeries, except through type 3 JDBC drivers.  My
original statement that the iSeries speaks ODBC is misleading or incorrect.
Unless you include type 3 JDBC, the iSeries speaks very little ODBC.

I think that sort of sums up the situation, don't you?

Joe