On Wed, 2 Feb 2011, [iso-8859-1] RENIER M�lanie wrote: > I found that in fact if GRETL says it connect to the data source > inf1 in Oracle, it does not stay connected to it! Does somebody > already encounter this problem?
Here is what gretl actually does when you issue the commands open ... --odbc to open an ODBC connection, and data ... --odbc to retrieve data from such a connection. 1) In response to the "open" command we record the information you provide (DSN, username and password) and try an SQLConnect. If the connection fails, we issue an error message and delete the DSN information. If the connection succeeds, we close the connection with SQLDisconnect but retain the good DSN information for use with the "data" command. 2) In response to the "data" command we see if there is a set of good, stored DSN information (from a successful "open"), and if so we use SQLConnect, grab the requested data, then do SQLDisconnect. That is, we don't keep the DB connection open indefinitely, rather we open it on demand based on verified DSN information. And that information will stay in place for the duration of a gretl session, unless it is replaced by a further invocation of "open ... --odbc". On the SQLConnect there is a login timeout of 5 seconds, which seems to be fairly standard. If you have a particularly cranky DBMS that won't authenticate you within 5 seconds, the "open" and/or "data" commands will fail. Allin Cottrell
