On Fri, Mar 22, 2002 at 03:01:17PM -0800, Stephen Keller wrote:
> Hello All:
> 
> I wrote:
> 
> > > the version of DBI for a given version of the DBD driver.  When 
> > > these don't match up, the driver doesn't always work correctly.
> 
> Tim asked:
> 
> > Why not, exactly?
> 
> Most of the problems we had were compile failures.  Features in the 
> DBI that weren't present in the DBD::DB2 and vice versa caused the 
> DBD::DB2 to fail on build.  The fix was to down rev the DBI to match 
> that specified by IBM.  It's been awhile (several revisions) since 
> we've seen these kinds of problems, so IBM may have fixed such 
> dependency problems.  As I said, the maturity and stability of these 
> tools has been rising steadily (thanks, in a large part, to your 
> efforts, BTW). 

Okay. (And thanks :)

> > The number, and maturity, of pure-Perl DBD's is rising.
> 
> Yes that is true.  Perhaps, I wasn't clear that I was addressing
> systems like DB2 that are still highly dependent on an underlying C
> interface.  It would be great to have a pure-Perl DBD::DB2, but I 
> don't expect one out of IBM anytime soon.  It might be possible to
> reverse engineer such an interface, but I don't think they've made
> enough details public to do so easily (or perhaps even legitimately). 

It would run too slow to use useful.

> > I'd rather push the other way... driver authors need to write drivers
> > the do-the-right-thing. Specifying particular versions of the DBI
> > is a bit of a cop out.
> 
> It is likely that IBM specifies a specific version of the DBI module
> because it is the version they tested against and thus the version
> they provide DBD::DB2 support against.

Sure. In that scenario people can just install the DBI version they
want and it'll be used in preference to the one that came with perl
(unless @INC is played with).

> I've strayed pretty far from the original topic.  Let me finish on 
> this note.  Were there a pure-Perl interface to DB2 (ala the DB2 net 
> drivers that are available for Java), I'd use it.  Having to install  
> client software on the node and then compile DBI and DBD::DB2 on that 
> machine is annoying.  I'd prefer a net-only type of interface that 
> depended on nothing more than the network-visibility of the desired 
> database server.  If someone is working on this and needs help, I'm
> willing to pitch in.

DBD::Proxy (and DBI::ProxyServer) may do the job for you (and if
not they should be extended/fixed so they do).

Tim.

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