Re: ODBC for UNIX and Linux Port

In article <3368d9cf.11136253@gate.idg.no>, Nils Myklebust <Nils.Myklebust@idg.no> wrote: >Even if you could you would have to follow a protocol. This protocol >is, as far as I know not spesified anywhere in the Informix >documentation. You migh be able to glean it out of the c-code >generated by ESQL/C or even 4GL, but I wouldn't try. > >If you do want to go direct this way ESQL/C does so for you. >I haven't tested, and heavent heard of anyone who have, but there is >no real reason why ESQL/C should be faster than the CLI (or UDBC from >OpenLink or other similar implementation). To the extent they do any >more processing at all than is done with ESQL/C I would think it would >be totaly swamped by the access times of the database. I've recently started doing some web sites where customers have been asking for web based access to their existing databases. I hadn't given it much thought since I assumed that there would be a fairly straight forward way for a remote Linux based web server to make socket based queries to the company database server. Upon investigation I have only found "solutions" which assume that the client application is going to be run on a machine with a full blown DB development system. While my prefered language is Python, it appears that all the other languages with some DB hooks all expect their DB modules to be compiled with something like ESQL/C and linked against the vendors libraries. I've looked at using ODBC, but it seems to be implemented the same way, you need to link against some libraries that don't exist under Linux. Is there anyone out there who can clarify that this is not the real situation? As for a Linux port, even if Informix Corp can't see the need for a Linux port, I would suggest that the scenario I have outlined above would be very commonplace. Many companies will be trying to get access to corporate databases which run on their servers, however it is unlikely that their web servers can or should run the same DB. Lots of web servers are Linux/Apache based, why on earth should you need to change this to gain access to a remote DB???