RE: new maintainer for the ODBC driver?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: kovacsz [mailto:zoli@pc10.radnoti-szeged.sulinet.hu]
> Sent: 26 October 2000 15:01
> To: Thomas Lockhart
> Cc: pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org; dpage@vale-housing.co.uk;
> mha@sollentuna.net; cedarc@visionforisrael.com;
> aalang@rutgersinsurance.com; byron.nikolaidis@home.com
> Subject: Re: new maintainer for the ODBC driver?
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 25 Oct 2000, Thomas Lockhart wrote:
> 
> > Hi Zoltan. I *finally* committed your patches to the main tree a few
> > minutes ago. Sorry for the huge delay. afaik you are the defacto
> > maintainer of ODBC :)
> 
> Huh... What to say now... :-?
> 
> Well, Byron's comment about THE maintainer (he/she should have a large
> amount of M$ application) points out that we could only continue using
> ODBC in future versions of PostgreSQL if all of us test the driver
> periodically with our installed Windows applications. I.e., 
> Cedar might
> test the Access side, Dave might test the pgadmin side (I 
> don't remember
> if it is written in VB or VC), Thomas might test the 
> Applixware side and
> we test it with our BCB/ODBCExpress application as well. As Magnus and
> Adam wrote, the best thing would be to write something like Postgres'
> regression tests but I think it would be very much time---the 
> applications
> already working with earlier versions of the driver might be 
> used instead.
> I think that among the above things pgadmin is the most important one
> because---checking the mailing lists---it is the most widely 
> used Windows
> application for Postgres. But I'm not sure.

(pgAdmin is written in VB) I certainly can help with testing. I could
obviously test with pgAdmin, but can also test other functions that pgAdmin
doesn't use - knocking up test apps in VB is generally very quick.

> IMHO, the ODBC driver at the current state is a great one, so 
> it's worth
> to continue the work on it. 

I agree. If anyone has ever messed around getting Merant/Data
Direct/Informix's drivers working with Informix they would agree whole
heartedly as well!! (in my opinion of course!)

That said, there are still things missing (don't ask me what, I haven't
looked into it yet). The biggest giveaway is when using ADO in VB - the
message 'Driver does not support requested properties' is not uncommon. This
does tend to be when messing around with the nut and bolts though, not in
general day to day use (fetching data, executing queries etc.). The
OpenSchema method of the ADODB.Connection object really shows this
problem....

> Have you got any statistics about 
> the number
> of people using the driver at the moment? This year most of the mails
> on the INTERFACES list are about the JDBC driver. So, 
> sometimes I don't
> think that the ODBC driver has any future. But now, maybe... :-)

I suspect it is more likely the case that the driver meets *most* people's
requirements in it's current form and is very stable. In the last 2 weeks,
pgAdmin v7.0.2 has been downloaded about 400 times from my site alone - if
you assume that only developers/admins use pgAdmin and that even in our 160
staff company that accounts for 2 of our 50 or so PostgreSQL/ODBC users,
then you are looking at huge numbers world wide... ;-)

Regards,
Dave.