TDBC design flaw

[DrS]

I have been using tclodbc for the last several years in a few scripts
that help maintain a production database. A month or so ago I had some
time to evaluate TDBC after some recommendations from group members. I
thought I would share my experience here in case it helps someone else.

Overall, the transition from tclodbc to tdbc/odbc is smooth. There is
not much documentation on it, especially sample scripts. But after a
little trial and error, things become clearer. The command interface is
clear and straightforward. Its resultset interface takes a slightly
different approach than tclodbc and is in a sense slightly more
flexible. It can handle multiple resultsets that some stored procedures
generate. I did not test it to see which one was more efficient for
lack of time.

Unfortunately, I am not replacing tclodbc for one small but important
feature. tclodbc gives you information on columns not only for tables
but also for resultsets. You can run a query and see what the returned
data types are. Tdbc/odbc currently cannot do this. This is important
at least for me in that the display of the returned data can be improved
(numbers vs. dates vs. strings). This is very important for our users
and we cannot do without it.

I believe this to be a design flaw. Fixing this would ring tdbc upto
par with tclodbc.


DrS

[Harald Oehlmann]

Dear DrS,

thank you for the Posting. I have put it on "wiki.tcl.tk/tdbc".
I invite you to register a feature request, I suppose on
http://core.tcl.tk/tdbcodbc/reportlist

tdbc was written by Kevin Kenny and is a big bunch of work.
As your feature works with tclodbc, it should be easily possible in
tdbc to.
I also invite you to look to the code of tdbc, if it is just a small
step to get your aim.
TDBC::ODBC compiles well with any Microsoft Compiler and you may start
it in the Visial Studio Debugger.

I personally migrated to tdbc::odbc to and is was ok. My motivation
was the unicode-support.

Thank you,
Harald

[DrS]

On 2/28/2013 2:53 AM, Harald Oehlmann wrote:
> I also invite you to look to the code of tdbc, if it is just a small
> step to get your aim.
> TDBC::ODBC compiles well with any Microsoft Compiler and you may start
> it in the Visial Studio Debugger.
>

Thanks you for putting it on the page. That is the proper place for it.

I personally think that it would be a small step to get this feature
into the tdbc library. A similar API is used to get that information
from tables already. I suspect that the call is most likely the same,
except perhaps for some parameters pointing at resultsets instead of
tables. I am not familiar with the ODBC standards and am a bit rusty
with that level of coding but I will download the sources and take a look.

> I personally migrated to tdbc::odbc to and is was ok. My motivation
> was the unicode-support.
>

Unicode support was another advantage tdbc had over tclodbc. I would
most likely switch too when this feature is supported.

DrS