On Jul 20, 2006, at 7:01 AM, Ruslan Zasukhin wrote:
I don't doubt that ODBC has been infuriating at times, particularly if
you've been using it as long as you have. But I think the new ODBC
plugin is a leap forward in terms of the power and flexibility it can
give to a cross platform RB application.
I think this will not be fun. Lets image how much more complex will
become
your code...you need do MORE then required queries to get this info
about db
drivers. You need establish MORE logic to manage different situations.
Okay, you have ask about CONVERT...good if you have it. But what you
will do
if you do not have it? Write manually? Total PIA ....
If you know in advance the database and driver you will be using, and
it's not important to support any others, then of course you don't have
to query the driver for its capabilities. This is known as database
lock-in, and there are very good reasons for doing that (as I'm sure
you would argue ;-) ) Keeping your code simple and not a PIA is one of
those reasons, and the new ODBC plugin supports simple, database
specific queries just like it always has.
However, if you do a little planning up front, you can establish at
connection time whether the driver / database meets the assumptions
you've established for interacting with the database. Then it becomes
less important whether you are connecting to SQL Server or MySQL or DB2
or whatever, and more important that it just meets your requirements.
Supporting a CONVERT function is one example - if you've decided to use
that function, you can test whether the database supports it after
connecting, and then politely inform the user that their database
doesn't meet the minimum requirements and then suggest an alternative.
With the old plugin, you had to wait until a query failed - leading to
the "debug everywhere" problem mentioned by Dr Hammond.
This is the power of the new plugin, and where it is a departure from
the "least common denominator" approach required by the old plugin (and
by several plugins which subclass from the RB Database class).
Jonathan Monroe
Actual Technologies - ODBC for Mac OS X
http://www.actualtechnologies.com
Jonathan Monroe
Actual Technologies, LLC
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode:
<http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/>
Search the archives of this list here:
<http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
