From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Feb 25 11: 9:38 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 524F537B401 for ; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:09:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from pa-plum1b-166.pit.adelphia.net (pa-plum1b-13.pit.adelphia.net [24.53.161.13]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9FA6C43FBD for ; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:09:34 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from potentialtech.com (working [172.16.0.95]) by pa-plum1b-166.pit.adelphia.net (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id h1PJ9MrX010697; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 14:09:32 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Message-ID: <3E5BBF62.2070607@potentialtech.com> Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 14:09:22 -0500 From: Bill Moran User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20021127 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Trent Nelson Cc: Mike Meyer , "Philip M. Gollucci" , synrat , questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Oracle on FreeBSD References: <1046128729.490.8.camel@dethstar> <200302242321.04463.philip@p6m7g8.com> <20030225091453.GB70361@limekiln.vcisp.net> <15963.38404.257921.610622@guru.mired.org> <20030225184430.GA73776@limekiln.vcisp.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Trent Nelson wrote: > On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 10:12:52AM -0600, Mike Meyer wrote: > >>In <20030225091453.GB70361@limekiln.vcisp.net>, Trent Nelson typed: >> >>> I'm interested in seeing how well something like PostgreSQL can be >>> used as a ``drop-in'' replacement for Oracle. If I have clients >>> connecting via ODBC (Rational ClearQuest), I personally couldn't >>> care what the underlying database is. Now *that* is something I'd >>> be interested in seeing a write up for. >> >>It's not a drop-in replacement. You have to install the PostgreSQL >>ODBC drivers on all the clients. Any client-side scripts will have to >>be changed to use a PostgreSQL wrappers instead of Oracle >>wrappers. The SQL is probably subtly different as well. >> >>SQL may be a standard, but you still get locked into the databases >>that you can query with it. > > Perhaps I should have been more specific. I'm interested in how far > you can get (i.e. what queries will work, what ones won't) before > you reach a complete road-block. With regards to ODBC, changing the > driver being used by the application's '*odbc.ini' configuration fi- > le is sufficient for modifying the database being interfaced to, is > it not? i.e. the application simply calls standard ODBC functions > which the individual database drivers implement. It depends on how the application is written. One of the "standard ODBC functions" available is an SQL passthru, which basically lets the application talk directly to the SQL server it the SQL server's native dialect of SQL. If the application uses this ability, it probably won't work at all. Additionally, there are different levels of ODBC compatibility, if your application requires a certain level, and the PostgreSQL ODBC driver doesn't support it, you're out of luck again. Not to say that there isn't a possibility that it will work, just that it's not a terribly simple question to answer. The whole "ODBC compatiblity" thing is (unfortunately) a lie. Nobody has stood up and constrained the standard enought to make it truely compatible across all databases. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message