Does Linux have a unified way of accessing databases? Windows has ADO...

[Harry George]

Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> writes:

> John J. Lee wrote:
>         ...
> >> > but does Linux have any sort of mechanism for unified database access
> >> > independant of which database is being accessed?
> >>
> >> No.
> > 
> > I hope Alex hasn't had all his verbosity knocked out of him by the book-
> > writing process.  :(
> 
> Others of my recent posts should assuage THAT fear -- still, a simple,
> direct yes-no question still admits of yes-no answers.
> 
> > There's nothing to stop you using (for example) the python database api on
> > unix.
> 
> Of course not -- that's cross-platform in the operating-system sense,
> but language-dependent.  ODBC, which another poster proposed in the
> "unified database access" role, is language-independent.
> 
> But both are strictly connected to the _relational_ model, which ADO (which
> the original poster singled out as an example of what he meant) *isn't* --
> ADO (the whole "Unified Database Access" architecture, actually) supports
> alternative organizations, such as hierarchical and "cubes" (a la OLAP).
> 
> Python's DB-API and ODBC don't.  So, the answer remains "no".
>

Under this interpretation we can safely say that no platform anywhere
has a fully DBMS-independent access mechanism.  ADO, for instance,
doesn't support an object database system we use, which started life
as swizzled C++ structures on SGI's.
 
> 
> Alex