ODBC Tutorials

Accessing SQL Server from Cognos

Accessing SQL Server from IBM Cognos will teach you how to get connected to SQL Server as quickly as possible so that you can started using Cognos to access SQL Server data today.

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Interoperability Across Data Access APIs through SQL Up-leveling

SQL up-leveling provides the capability to write a SQL statement that can be executed across multiple databases, regardless of the databases’ SQL implementation. For example, a SQL statement written against Oracle will also be interoperable with DB2. Each of the major database vendors implements certain functionality in a unique proprietary format.

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ODBC Driver Diagnosis and Troubleshooting

This paper discusses the diagnostic tools that are available to configure and troubleshoot your ODBC environment and provides a troubleshooting section that discusses some common types of issues that you may experience when using ODBC applications. These tools and techniques apply to both the DataDirect Connect for ODBC (32-bit) and DataDirect Connect64 for ODBC (64-bit) drivers.

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Designing Performance-Optimized ODBC Applications

Developing performance-oriented ODBC applications is not easy. Microsoft's ODBC Programmer's Reference does not provide information about system performance. In addition, ODBC drivers and the ODBC driver manager do not return warnings when applications run inefficiently. This white paper contains some general guidelines that have been compiled by examining the ODBC implementations of numerous shipping ODBC applications.

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Failover Support in DataDirect Connect for ODBC Drivers

Connection failover and connection retry are two useful features that are available in the following DataDirect Connect® for ODBC drivers: DB2 Wire Protocol, Informix Wire Protocol, Oracle Wire Protocol, Oracle, SQL Server Wire Protocol (UNIX only), and Sybase Wire Protocol.

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Increasing DataDirect Connect for ODBC Driver Performance

One of the advantages of DataDirect Connect Series ODBC drivers (DataDirect Connect for ODBC and DataDirect Connect64 for ODBC) is their flexibility; they can be fine-tuned to enhance performance. The settings that enhance performance may result in reduced functionality, but often the functionality vs. performance trade-off has no impact on the application. The information in the following sections discusses how to tune the DB2, Informix, Informix Wire Protocol, Oracle, Oracle Wire Protocol, and Sybase Wire Protocol drivers for increased performance.

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Mapping XML Documents to Tables Using the DataDirect Connect for ODBC XML Driver

The DataDirect Connect® for ODBC XML driver uses one of two modes when mapping XML documents to tables. The default mode maps a document to a single table. This mode works well if the target document has a simple structure that maps to rows and columns. In this mode, the table name is equivalent to the document name. Because many XML documents are not structured in such a simple form, the driver also has a mode that maps the document to one or more tables. In this mode, the DataDirect Connect for ODBC XML driver uses an algorithm to correlate the document to the tables, columns, and rows. This article explains the fundamentals of the algorithm.

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Move Your 'Big Data' Faster with Bulk Load

As the data and information used by businesses grow exponentially, IT organizations face a daunting challenge moving what is now termed in the enterprise as “Big Data”. What is the quickest and most efficient way to move, extract, backup, archive, and access mountains of critical information paramount to the success of the business? If your business has “Big Data” that needs to move into and out of Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase or Salesforce.com, you may be stuck with an under-performing approach and don't even know it. Discover how easy it is to use Progress DataDirect Drivers to move bulk data from one database directly into the other by streaming, thus avoiding the need to load the data into memory.

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ODBC Driver Thread Protection Schemes

The ODBC specification mandates that all drivers must be thread-safe; that is, drivers must not fail when database requests are made on separate threads. It is a common misperception that issuing requests on separate threads will always result in improved throughput. Because of network transport and database server limitations, some drivers may serialize threaded requests to the server to ensure thread safety. The ODBC 3.0 specification does not provide a method to find out how a driver will service threaded requests although this information is quite useful to an application. All DataDirect drivers provide this information to the user via the SQLGetInfo information type 1028.

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ODBC Tip – Connection Failover

Connection failover allows an application to connect to an alternate, or backup, database server if the primary database server is unavailable, for example, because of a hardware failure or traffic overload. Connection failover ensures an open route to your data, even when server downtime occurs.

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Persisting Result Sets as XML Data Files

DataDirect Connect® Series ODBC drivers (DataDirect Connect for ODBC and DataDirect Connect64 for ODBC) include a feature that enables you to retrieve result sets from a relational database (such as Oracle, Informix, DB2, or Sybase) and store the result sets as XML data files (see following figure). This can be accomplished by simply adding one or two lines of code to existing ODBC applications.

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Superior ODBC Access from SAS on Linux

Progress DataDirect Connect for ODBC Drivers are highly flexible - you can use our drivers to connect to any and all major databases. In this particular example, we will use Oracle. This article explains how quick and easy it is to connect to an Oracle 11g server from SAS running on a Linux client using the Progress DataDirect Connect for ODBC Oracle Wire Protocol driver.

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Support for 2007 Daylight Saving Time (DST) Change

Daylight Saving Time (DST) will start and end on the following dates: Start date: March 11 End date: November 4 DataDirect Technologies performs ongoing testing to ensure that all Connect Series for ODBC drivers work properly for all DST transitions. No changes were required in the drivers. If your application is sensitive to the change in DST, you must ensure that the operating system and database have been updated for the change in DST rules for 2007 and beyond.

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Understanding and Using Packages on DB2 UDB

The concept of "packages" in the DB2 Universal Database (UDB) system is often not well understood. This paper provides both general information about what packages are and how they are created and bound, as well as specific information about both the DataDirect Connect for ODBC (32-bit) and DataDirect Connect64 for ODBC (64-bit) drivers. DataDirect Connect for ODBC and DataDirect Connect64 for ODBC each include a DB2 Wire Protocol ODBC driver that connects to DB2 UDB on Windows, UNIX/Linux, and mainframe servers without the use of DB2 UDB client software. The drivers automatically create and bind packages on DB2 UDB and also allow the user to modify these packages.

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Understanding Unicode and ODBC Data Access

This document provides a brief background on Unicode, its development, and how it is accommodated by Unicode and non-Unicode DataDirect Connect® Series for ODBC drivers. The DataDirect Connect Series for ODBC drivers include DataDirect Connect and Connect XE for ODBC as well as DataDirect Connect64® and Connect64 XE for ODBC.

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Using DataDirect Connect for ODBC with Oracle Heterogeneous Services

Heterogeneous Services and Generic Connectivity provide Oracle customers the ability to access and integrate non-Oracle data sources, providing a wide degree of flexibility in a multi-database environment. Companies who wish to use Generic Connectivity to consolidate and integrate data with Oracle require optimal connectivity to ensure the best performance. DataDirect Connect for ODBC delivers the most scalable and best performing connectivity available for Oracle Heterogeneous Services.

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Datadirect Connect for Oracle with Oracle RAC

In today's e-business on-demand environment, more companies are turning to a Grid computing infrastructure for distributed computing and data resources such as processing, network bandwidth, and storage. Grids allow companies to pool available resources for scalability and high availability. Built on Oracle Parallel Server (OPS) architecture, Oracle introduced Real Application Clusters (RAC) with Oracle 9i. Oracle RAC also is a key part of the Oracle 10g release. Oracle RAC allows a single physical Oracle database to be accessed by concurrent instances of Oracle running across several different CPUs.

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Using Oracle Database Gateway for ODBC

Heterogeneous Services and Database Gateway for ODBC allow Oracle ODBC customers to access and integrate non-Oracle data sources, offering flexibility in multi-database environments. Using Database Gateway for ODBC Oracle requires optimal connectivity to ensure the best application performance. DataDirect Connect for ODBC Oracle drivers deliver the most scalable and best performing connectivity Oracle Database Gateway.

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Using DataDirect ODBC Drivers with PERL

PERL (Practical Extraction and Report Language) has had strong acceptance in the IT community since the introduction of version 1.0 in 1987. PERL is used widely on UNIX systems, especially Linux, for text manipulation and parsing scenarios that are too intensive for shell commands, but not complex enough for a language like C. Not being able to use shell commands for these actions makes them less portable across different implementations of UNIX. Many organizations today use PERL to handle common tasks associated with web servers and web interfaces to corporate databases.

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Using Database Indexes

There are a number of ways in which you can improve the performance of database activity using indexes. We provide only general guidelines that apply to most databases. Consult your database vendor's documentation for more detailed information. For information regarding how to create and drop indexes, see your database system documentation. An index is a database structure that you can use to improve the performance of database activity. A database table can have one or more indexes associated with it.

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Using PHP with DataDirect ODBC Drivers

PHP is a server-side scripting language that has proven its popularity and success through explosive growth. In the last five years, the number of domains using PHP to generate Web pages has grown from under two million to over 20 million (http://www.php.net/usage.php). PHP long ago moved from a hobbyist tool for creating dynamic Web pages to a commercially viable option for large Web sites and enterprise-level applications including Google, Yahoo, and SugarCRM.

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Why Choose 64-Bit Technology as Your Server Platform?

Companies are processing more and more data, and encountering performance limitations with their 32-bit systems. Increasingly, software companies are announcing support for 64-bit applications. Many hardware vendors already have 64-bit solutions in place. This white paper gives you an overview of the reasons for switching to 64-bit computing, and provides examples of companies who have made the switch for all or part of their computing needs.

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Why Open Source Database Drivers Are Not Viable

Open source software is gaining traction in many software infrastructure markets, particularly in the operating system, Web/application server and database server infrastructure areas. Many organizations currently are leveraging open source components or are devising an open source acquisition and management plan. In most cases, organizations are adopting a blended-source approach that leverages both open source and traditionally licensed software. It is not uncommon to see environments that leverage a commercial database, such as Oracle, running on Linux, an open source operating system. This phenomenon is accelerated by interoperability support for open source components provided by traditionally licensed software vendors.

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