RE: Connecting to AS400 from MS SQL Enterprise Manager

Who wrote the OBDC for non Microsoft products to run under Windows?  IBM
wrote their own.  Where is Microsoft's OBDC for platforms other than
Microsoft, non existent unless you purchase a third party product.
Microsoft does/will not write the OBDC drives for MVS, OS400, or Linux.
Yes Linux does have OBDC drivers for MS SQL but they are third party.
Not having used other non Microsoft or OS400 databases I cannot speak
for them but I do know that my XP SP2 machine does not have any non-MS
OBDC drivers except for the Client Access one I installed.

So be careful who you nit-pick.


Chris Bipes
Information Services Director
CrossCheck, Inc.

-----Original Message-----
<nit-picking>
So where is the ODBC Client ON the iSeries?  That is my issue.  DRDA is 
great (had everyone adopted it) but most OS's support ODBC and have 
applications that support ODBC (emphasis on *Open* DB Connectivity). 
</nit-picking>

It would be sweet we if we could define an ODBC connection on the 
iSeries and RPG (and other apps) could talk through that.  For example, 
I can open up MS Query in windows (part of MS Office, actually) and use 
whatever database I want (if it supports ODBC).  If I open Query/400 I 
can only query databases on the iSeries.  Again, I know that there are 
tools that can be purchased to do this kind of thing.

Again, no big deal.  I am very used to this and have written all sorts 
of programs that run on the iSeries and talk to other DB's (primarily 
through JDBC, as Rob pointed out).

So your statement is that the iSeries doesn't support Open Database 
Connectivity ODBC (as a client) is because the iSeries IS open? Hmmm, 
not sure I agree.  It probably doesn't support ODBC because writing an 
ODBC client for the iSeries isn't a priority for IBM (there may be 
technical issues as well).  Business Partners can do that kind of thing 
(as they should).

I am just "wishing" here, not being critical (at all) of the iSeries and

it's capabilities.