Re: Standard DBI Proposal

In article <5oou05FngqlvU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Kevin Kenny <kennykb@xxxxxxx> wrote:

I owe you an explanation of why I haven't tried ODBC on Unix
for quite some time. I have always found ODBC, even on its
native Windows, to be slow, and often have stability issues
with it as well. I use it to connect to Jet databases and

I've had fairly good luck using ODBC with Tcl on Unix and
Windows, but can't say that for what I was doing that I
noticed any kind of slowness or instability.

A benchmark (ducking for cover [*]) would be better to evaluate
any performance penalty in using ODBC. Ideally, it would test
the three Tcl ODBC drivers with the two open source ODBC
driver managers (UnixODBC and iODBC), Windows and MacOSX ODBC,
against database specific Tcl drivers (i.e., SQLite, Oratcl,
PgTcl, Mysqltcl, etc.)

[*] database benchmarking generally accepted as more of a
black art/Heisenberg science than most other benchmarks.
And we all know about "lies, damn lies, and benchmarks."


and go." Having to deal with configuring ODBC data sources,
installing *three* separate ODBC layers on Unix (ODBC
itself, an ODBC driver for the database, and a Tcl-ODBC layer)
would totally destroy that advantage. ODBC therefore
loses out on grounds of both convenience and performance.

Note that ODBC also allows connection strings to be specified
in the connect string, without having to define a datasource
in advance. See the Wiki page for TclODBC for samples. A
small helper Tcl proc could easily build connections strings
for a variety of known databases.

If having a database independent layer is a goal for TCT,
then you could eliminate two of those installations layers
by shipping and compiling the driver manager and Tcl interface
with Tcl. That might be easier than designing and coding
a whole new interface layer.

--
Tom Poindexter
tpoindex@xxxxxxx
.

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