RE: ODBC FROM iSeries - huh? -- MIDRANGE-L

If I can throw a little more mud on the lens--

ODBC is Microsoft's implementation of the SQL-CLI standard. Whoever pointed
us at that site about that, it's good info. Check earlier in the thread.

On the 400 this is just called SQL CLI. CLI means Call Level Interface.

In the Windows world (and possibly some Unices) the piece that converts
your generic SQL statements to the syntax of each individual server is the
ODBC driver, supplied by the manufacturer of each respective database, or a
third party.

On the 400, this component has a couple names, that I know of. One is
application request driver, or ARD. This is what it is called on the
ADDRDBDIRE command, where you set up the link to the remote DB.

The other name, I just learned today, is "SQL Client Integration Exit
Program". Oy!

The thing that can get confusing is, that everyone knows or has heard of
ODBC. It's ironic that IBM, MS, Oracle and all these guys are a part of the
committee that sets up this CLI standard, but the world doesn't know it as
that.

JDBC, if pure Java, is interesting. It would seem to be the ticket, as you
are talking to something on the other machine that does the translation to
the database native syntax, but on that machine. Interesting. CLI (or ODBC)
does the translation on the client.

Why this translation? Every DBMS has slightly (and ometimes nto so
slightly) different capabilities, as well as occasionally different ways of
saying the same thing. Some require a semicolon at the end of each
statement, some don't.

I would say that at this time there is NO way to do CLI (ODBC) to a non-DB2
database. It CAN be done to any of the DB2/UDB databases, AFAIK, with the
proper setup on the DB2 server.

At 06:48 PM 4/9/02 -0500, you wrote:
> > 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
>
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