<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Mozilla/4.72C-CCK-MCD Caldera Systems OpenLinux [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.14 i686) [Netscape]"> </head> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" link="#0000EF" vlink="#51188E" alink="#FF0000"> <b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">unixODBC - Text File Driver</font></b> <br> <hr WIDTH="100%"> <p><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">What Is It</font></b> <p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">The unixODBC ODBC Text File Driver implements a tiny SQL engine based upon a Text File I/O API.</font> <br> <b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font></b> <p><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Weaknesses</font></b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font> <p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">1. Too slow for large data sets.</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica">2. Only most basic SQL supported.</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica">3. No support for a catalog (at this time) so;</font> <blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica">- only varchar data type</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica">- length always default length (compiled into driver)</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica">- table files must have column names on 1st row</font></blockquote> <font face="Arial,Helvetica">4. No support for multi-user (at this time).</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font> <font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font> <p><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Strengths</font></b> <p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">1. Its tiny. Smaller even than client libs for SQL servers.</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica">2. Does not require any client libs to be installed.</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica">3. Does not require a full DBMS to be installed.</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica">4. Open file format.</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica">5. Can be usefull for accessing exported data.</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica">6. Use the power of SQL to work with your text data.</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica">7. Use isql in batch mode to work with your text data.</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica">8. Free... even for commercial use.</font> <br> <b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font></b> <p><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Future</font></b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font> <p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">1. Hopefully it will be used as the default data source for PIM apps. Then a user may easily upscale/change data source without changing code.</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica">2. A catalog file will be used to support more table and column information.</font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica">3. Table locking to provide support for multi-user.</font> <br><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font></b> <b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font></b> <p><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">More info...</font></b> <p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><a href="Setup.html">Setup</a></font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><a href="SupportedSyntax.html">Supported Syntax</a></font> <br><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><a href="FileFormats.html">File Formats</a></font> <br> <hr WIDTH="100%"> <br> <br> <br> </body> </html>
