[DB-SIG] Oracle interface for Windows/NT

[Greg Stein (Exchange)]

Good point, but let's also be clear that all of the existing DB-API
modules use a consistent date/time mechanism: the unix time_t values
(the integers returned by the time module). mxODBC is the "odd man out"
in this context (in terms of its date/time handling, and the API
extensions for catalog handling).

That said, Marc is doing some good work to introducing a good date/time
system for use by DB-API and Python in general. It looks like that new
system will be incorporated into DB-API 1.1.

-g
 
-----Original Message-----
From:	M.-A. Lemburg [SMTP:lemburg@uni-duesseldorf.de]
Sent:	Monday, January 19, 1998 3:19 AM
To:	DB-SIG @ Python.org
Subject:	Re: [DB-SIG] Oracle interface for Windows/NT

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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DB-SIG  - SIG on Tabular Databases in Python

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