[Tutor] connecting to odbc

[Magnus Lyckå]

At 14:16 2003-05-08 +0800, ali wrote:
>i have a problem connecting to my ms access database using odbc???

There are several options here...and they work not only with
MS Access, but for all databases you can access via ODBC on you
computer.

1. You can use the OBDC module in win32all (or ActivePython) but
    it's not really maintained as far as I understand. I'd avoid
    that. (That's the "import odbc" etc.)

2. You can use mxODBC from egenix.com. Note that this requires
    a paid licence for commercial use.

3. You can use the new adodbapi by Henrik Ekelund. This might be
    your best choice. See http://adodbapi.sourceforge.net/

4. You can skip the DB-API all together, and access ADO directly
    through win32com. See http://www.e-coli.net/pyado.html

5. You can do the same as the previous, but using DAO. See
    http://starship.python.net/crew/bwilk/access.html

mxODBC is the only solutions of these that work in other
operating systems than MS Windows.

>###########################
>import odbc as o
>con = o.odbc("connection string")
>###########################

This looks like the old, unmaintained Odbc module in win32all.
I would avoid that.

>but i dont know how to connect using the "new" way???

What's the new way? As I said, this is old code, it does not
follow the DB-API 2 standard.

If you have set up a system DSN called "myDB" in the Windows
Control Panel's "Data Source (ODBC)" setup, you can open it
using

con = o.odbc("myDB")

But I suggest that you have a look at adodbapi if you want
to follow the standard interface for accessing databases in
Python, but only need to run your program on Windows for now.
(That seems likely if you work with Access...)


--
Magnus Lycka (It's really Lyckå), magnus@thinkware.se
Thinkware AB, Sweden, www.thinkware.se
I code Python ~ The shortest path from thought to working program