Re: Native Informix Driver for Visual Basic.

Nils Myklebust wrote: > > [snip] > > >P.S.: What do you think about the "new" CLI 2.8 which is released by > >informix and now also includes Intersolv 3.0 drivers? Which one is better? > >CLI or Intersolv? > > The only opinion I have on these products is that they are useless > untill they at least solve the security issues. It's completely > mindless to make such products available where there is no way to > protect my database from free updates anywhere via tools like MS > Access. To be fair, this would require a re-write of the ODBC standard as there is no clear statement of security issues in the ODBC standard. Many ODBC driver vendors do implement security (Yes, we do as do others), but they are above and beyond the ODBC standard. > > I tried both and still have the problem, that "long" > >DECIMALs are converted in text strings in Access 97. Any idea what went > >wrong? > > MS Access only resemblence of something like a decimal datatype is the > currency datatype. It is fixed to four decimal places (after the > decimal point) and I believe 32 digits accuracy. If your decimals are > outside this range there is no way MS Access can support them other > than converting the data to text. If your decimals are within this > range I believe the ODBC driver need special support for returning > them to MS Access as currency data, but this is outside my strong > points of knowledge, so I may be wrong. > If you want them returned as floating point numbers, why did you use > decimals in the first place. Of course for some reporting use it might > be usefull, but most of the time it could easily become devastating. > > You realy have to talk to Microsoft about why they haven't implemented > the decimal datatype in MS Access. It would be so simple, and would > solve a lot of problems. It tells you something about Microsoft that > they still haven't done that. > There are few tools better than MS Access arround for simple ad hoc > access to SQL type databases and simple reporting. There are however > several tools that are better for serious reporting and other similar > work. Even some that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. We have used > Impromptu and PowerPlay from Cognos with success, but there are others > as well. > If you want to create applications MS Access isn't exactly a very > usefull tool. > > Nils Myklebust > NM Data AS > Norway > E-mail: Nils.Myklebust@nmdata.com > FAQ at: http://www.iiug.org/techinfo/faq/faq_top.html > (Now with ODBC info under "Third party products".) The usual problem on this one is that people have money/currency datatype in Informix (which is actually a special form of decimal) and want to put it in money type in Access. There is no ODBC type money, so the best it will get in Access is decimal provided the ODBC driver does the datatype translation correctly. In some cases (proof as above), it may bring it back into Access as text where it would be completely unmanipulable numerically. At least as a decimal one can carry out mathematical operations on the data (without the currency sign). -- Allan Gould SCO SQL-Retriever. http://www.sco.com/vision/products/sqlretriever/ for more information and a downloadable eval. (allang at sco dot com) (Please remove anti-spam measures if replying)