[DB-SIG] Oracle interface for Windows/NT

M.-A. Lemburg lemburg@uni-duesseldorf.de
Mon, 19 Jan 1998 12:18:34 +0100


Greg Stein (Exchange) wrote:
> 
> The ODBC module has been used extensively against Oracle databases,
> including the use of dates and raw values. It was quite capable and had
> everything needed. It is certainly more straightforward than trying to
> use oracledb on NT, which I seriously doubt anybody has done, which
> means that you'd be working with something even less stable than the
> ODBC module. I believe mxODBC was intended for Unix platforms. Since it
> uses the same interface as the win32 ODBC module, I don't see that it
> would actually provide any additional benefit, and it, too, has
> certainly been used less than the win32 ODBC module.

One thing to note: the ODBC module that comes with Mark Hammonds
PythonWin uses different date/time formats than mxODBC and does
not yet provide catalog functions. In case you want to switch to
mxODBC at a later point, you should use the dbi-interface in your
apps. If you need to handle dates before 1.1.70 then you don't really
have an option: if you're lucky (I can't tell, since I am not using
PythonWin) and the time routines in Python also handle negative
values correctly, the time values provide a range from 1901-2038.
If not...

Maybe Bill (or someone else) will find some time and incorporate
the date/time types into the Win ODBC module too. Version 1.0 should
be out in a month or so. The interface is stabilizing now.

BTW: In case you get mxODBC to compile under Windows NT/95, please
give me feeback about it (and any changes that you had to make).
I don't want to compete against the win32 ODBC module, but I would
like to make it as portable as possible. If someone turns it into
a win32 DLL I would happily make that DLL available on starship.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg



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