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ODBC/32 speeds client- server connections |
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| Native access for IMAGE, KSAM and MPE comes with good speed, fast setup |
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ODBC/32 ODBC/32 version 2.0.2.0 |
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Review by Shawn Gordon Do you want to be able to build
client-server applications quickly?
Not only build them quickly, but
have them execute quickly? If
so, then ODBC/32 is for you. What
ODBC/32 does is give you native
access to the IMAGE part of
IMAGE/SQL, as well as KSAM and MPE
files as ODBC data sources. Unlike
some other ODBC solutions available
for the HP 3000, ODBC/32
doesn’t make you configure any Allbase
tables to present the views of the
IMAGE/SQL database. The Minisoft ODBC driver works like pretty much any other ODBC driver on your PC. You go into the Control Panel and define a data source using the ODBC/32 driver (See Figure 1). All of your connection information is defined here so that your application doesn’t have to worry about it. The ODBC/32 driver knows how to read all the IMAGE information directly, so in your program you will get a pick list of sets and items. Figure 2 shows an example of this working with Fujitsu’s PowerCobol (covered in Inside COBOL this month). If the database is not defined nicely – in other words, using generic buffers that are defined in copylibs or dictionaries – then you have to spend a little time in the Schema Editor to define it, just as you would for the MPE or KSAM files. See Figure 3 for an example of the the Schema Editor’s interface. Features Once you have set up your HP 3000-based data source and configured a schema file for it if you need to, you are able to use it from any tested ODBC-compliant Windows program. If a schema file is defined for a data source, then you need to specify it in the ODBC configuration program. That way the defined data source is presented to you when you access it. ODBC/32 fully supports the HP
3000 TPI (Third Party Indexing)
Interface, as well as the
recently-released IMAGE b-trees, and
it appears to be nicely optimized
to take advantage of them. You
also get to deal directly with KSAM
and MPE files as though they
were databases. ODBC/32 will make
use of the the KSAM keys if
it can – but an MPE file will,
of course, always be a serial read,
because there is no key structure
to it. You can either download the demo from the web, have MiniSoft e-mail it to you, or have them send you an actual set of diskettes and tape. The installation is in two parts. First you have to install the server software on the HP side and launch the background listener job. The second part is installing the ODBC driver on each PC client. Fortunately, MiniSoft sells its software as server-based, so you can make as many copies of the client software as you want. The documentation is very clear
and concise, with plenty of examples
using various tools such as Crystal
Reports, Visual Basic, InQuizitive
and PowerBuilder to name a few. I
had no trouble installing, configuring
and using the driver. You
shouldn’t either. This was really kind of fun to test. I spent a total of one hour installing the ODBC/32 driver, installing Fujitsu’s PowerCobol, and writing my first PowerCobol program using an HP 3000-based data source through the driver. I then used my little client program to populate the data set with all the information. I tried it with some other products as well, such as Clarion, VB, Delphi and Crystal Reports. Crystal Reports was also a piece
of cake. It took about three
minutes to create a default report
against my IMAGE-based data.
For some reason VB and Delphi make
the process rather complex,
but I was able to easily retrieve
the database structural information
in the Delphi Database Explorer. The performance of ODBC/32 is nothing short of amazing. I was able to read, delete, and update pretty much instantly. For a database that is nicely defined it takes only a minute to set it up for ODBC access. I have several items I would like to see added to the product to really round it out. One is the ability to configure a security matrix for what and how data can be accessed. It is quite likely that you would want to distribute the same program to multiple people who had their update access disabled. You could control this in the program, but I would have liked to have seen an external access control mechanism. Another area would be a debug/trace facility that would allow you to see what kind of SQL statements are getting generated and their equivalent IMAGE calls. I can see how this would help you fine tune your application, otherwise it’s sort of a black box thing. To be fair, I haven’t seen any other ODBC driver include this either. The only other caution I would pass along – and I believe this is true of any ODBC driver – is that this is a data access control method, period. You can’t access custom servers, or the CI at all. If you want to do that, then you should look at the MiddleMan product from MiniSoft instead. By the time you read this MiniSoft should have released support for reading the definition from a Quiz sub-file, and possibly support a PowerHouse Dictionary file. ODBC/32 is a very nice solution, and much easier to work with than the HP-supplied ODBCLink SE solution. If you are giving any thought at all about maybe letting your users create their own reports, then pull down a demo from the MiniSoft Web site, and get a copy of Crystal Reports and go.
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