[olug] JDBC - ODBC huh?

[Mike Hostetler]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 09:57:57AM -0600, Mac Petras wrote:
> Well, I'm kinda new to Java but here's what I'm thinking....
> 
> MS Access is not a database server, it is a file-based RDBMS.
> ODBC for MS Access will allow you access the file with a generic
> interface. If that file is on another machine, you access the
> database file via a Windows Share.

No, you can use ODBC with Access -- though you are right about it being a
file-based RDBMS.  

On Windows, you have to setup a System DSN to the Access file.  I assume
that, if you move the file somewhere else, it will break.  I have no idea
how you set this up on Linux (but I'm building unixODBC as we speak to
find out).

> Now since you're running, Linux, this gets a tad more difficult
> in that you will most likely need to mount the windows share
> using Samba.  Then, theoretically, you might be able to have
> read/write access to the file.

The trick is that Access (and SQLServer, what I've tried to get to) is
that MS won't open the drivers, so you can't just access them.  Of
course, you can *pay* MS for the info, and then sell drivers for it (ala
EasySoft, which was mentioned before).  Obviously, using an open source
DB would make this work a lot easier (but you probably already knew
that).

 
> Make sense?  I'm a relative newbie to Linux/Java, so please
> correct or expound on this if you have more/better info.....

I hope I helped.

-- mikeh