[A/AK]:

SnODBC is a binding for ODBC API. It is distributed as [starkit] that may be sourced to have a '''snodbc''' package available. The starkit may also be run to see the documentation.

URL: http://www.sw4me.com/snodbc.kit

The starkit contains binaries of [Ffidl] and [dict] extensions compiled for Windows-x86 and Linux-x86.

[2005-10-06] For the convenience of those who don't use tclkit and starkits, ready-to-use binary distributions were prepared:

Linux (x86): http://www.sw4me.com/snodbc-linux-x86.tar.gz
Windows (x86): http://www.sw4me.com/snodbc-windows-x86.zip


SnODBC is mostly compatible with [TclODBC], but there are some subtle differences. See the documentation for details. 

The main ''good'' difference is that SnODBC supports [Unicode] character types. Other advantages of SnODBC include:

   * Support for ODBC GUI: you may bring up datasource selection dialog to establish a connection, and save the connection string for subsequent connections.
   * Additional support for metadata: '''rowid''', '''primarykeys''', '''procedures''' and '''procedurecolumns''' metadata queries.
   * Support for scrollable cursors: navigate back and forth on the result set when the driver supports it.
   * Setting NULL representation for a statement in order to distinguish NULLs from the empty string value.

The extension is developed for Tcl 8.5; this starkit was created with some help of the [sugar] macro processor to translate [{expand}] syntax into the compatible replacement for Tcl-8.4. See [using sugar for forward-compatible {expand}] for a syntax macro that does this job.

The version of the starkit presented here may be used with Tclkit 8.4 (tested on 8.4.9), or with any Tcl 8.4 distribution supporting starkits, such as [ActiveTcl], [dqkit], [TixTclKit].

Once downloaded, the starkit may be updated to the latest version with the [sdx] tool:

 sdx update -from http://sw4me.com/cgi-bin/starsync snodbc.kit

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2005-09-16: Some changes were made to improve [TclODBC] compatibility. Now the vast majority of scripts using TclODBC will just work 
with SnODBC as well.

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[snichols] 09-16-05 I am curious did you use Ffidl to create the C wrappers for the C based ODBC API? 

[A/AK] 09-17-05 I use Ffidl to create the [TCL] commands that call ODBC functions in ODBC shared library. There is no C functions in SnODBC, and, consequently, no compilation is required when [Ffidl] is already available.

[snichols] That's pretty wild. So Ffidl is what exposes the C based ODBC functions to Tcl?

[A/AK] Yes. [Ffidl] is great at exposing C based functions to Tcl at runtime.
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[Category Database] | [Category Package]