Conference orarep::nomahs::odbc_rdb_driver

> -< Is MS Office 97 supported by our driver? >-

It is more like will MS Office 97 break our driver ...

>The customer had called Microsoft support already and they told him that
>odbc drivers that work with office 95 must be level 2 compliant and
>drivers must be v3.0.

We are not level 2 compliant, and supply the 2.50.??? MS odbc stuff.

Office 97 is AKA as 7.0 i.e. Access 7 (i think).  I have talked to
customers using that version and it does work - once we figured out what
they were doing wrong.

Suggest turning on client logging for the two versions and see what is
different.

    >The customer had called Microsoft support already and they told him
    >odbc drivers that work with office 95 must be level 2 compliant and
    >drivers must be v3.0.
    
    If they forced everyone to completely support all level 2 calls, I
    don't think they would have ANY drivers that would work :) We support
    all of core, level 1 and most of level 2. 
    
    With the new office '97 stuff, Microsoft has introduced a new 3.0
    driver manager and ODBC spec. I have tested the new 3.0 driver manager
    with 2.10 and it worked fine. 
    
    If Microsoft has included some calls that are specific to the new spec,
    they will be incompatable with not only us but the rest of the world. 
    
    As Jerry said, you should try and troubleshoot the problem and see if
    the problem is really related to the new ODBC spec or something else. 
    
    John

Thanks Jerry and John!

Diane

>  -< Whatever happened to "yes" or "no"? >-

they  went out with the "Gates" 

Hi,

Found out that the problem is when they install MS Office 97 it
apparently installs the new 3.0 driver manager and when they go
to define a data source definition the "OPTIONS" button is no
longer available.  The read-only box in the options screen is critical
to their business needs.  Now it is not there because the options box
is not there.

I told them that checking this read-only box was not the best method
for restricting access to the database and he knows that.  However, he
has users that are allowed write access to the database as long as they
are using their application software.  He wants these same users to
be able to use their same userid to log into the database using
PC query tools and when they use these tools their access is to
be read-only.  If he uses grant, he'll have to give each user two
different userids depending on which method of db access they are using.

John, you've installed MS Office 97, did you notice the options box missing? 
If so, is there anything we can do about it?

I wanted to suggest the following to him re: restricting access thru
sql/services but wanted feedback first.  

He has SQL/Services 6.1  Can he define a db class server with
a username in the USER prompt that has read-only privs, then anyone
using that db class server will only have read-only privs?  And restrict
access to that server thru the use of an ACL?

And he could do the same thing in v7 by creating a db service with
authorization = service owner instead of connect username and give service
owner read-only privs to the db and then restrict access to the service
to only those users allowed access to rdb, right?

Thanks, Diane

    Well, I tested with the new ODBC driver manager. I didn't lay out the
    big bucks for Office '97... yet...
    
    Anyway, the new stuff comes with a new ODBC administrator. It is a bit
    different but our screens are the same, ie, the options checkbox is
    still there. Make sure the customer is going through the ODBC
    administrator and not something else that prompts for info wizard
    style...  
    
    Also, I would recommend creating different classes (or services in 7.0)
    to handle the security as you suggested. The read only checkbox only 
    sets up the default transaction, it does nothing for security and is 
    very simple to override... 

    Try www.microsoft.com/odbc and look for the ODBC 3.0 SDK. Not sure if
    it is still available or not...
    
    John

I've downloaded and installed on Win95 the 3.0 driver/adminstrator from 
Microsoft's web page.  (It apparently cannot be installed on NT 3.5.1).

There are now 3 ways to define DSN's.  User, System and File.  The way
we are used to is user.  I've successfully defined a user dsn, and 
attached to an Rdb database. 

QUESTIONS
---------
1.  Customer is using File DSN.  I also defined a file dsn and there
is no option button.  Is this an Oracle or Microsoft issue?

2.  Customer also tried to attach using a file dsn and got an error
saying driver needs to be level-3 compliant and MS confirmed that we
do and to call us.  However, user dsn's work fine.  I tried using a
file dsn and get a different error:  
  "Reserved error (-7778), there is no message for this error."

*** Can anyone please verify as to whether file DSN's (available in
    the new MS 3.0 odbc administrator) can be used with our driver?  ***

Thanks, Diane

regarding the -7778 error I found a bug, its number is 478285.
Please take a look at it.

erich

Thanks Erich,

I looked at the bug.  Didn't help.  The workaround is to edit the file
dsn file and modify:
[ODBC]
DRIVER=ORACLE73
DBQ=<alias you defined>
to:
[ODBC]
DSN=<alias you defined>

Since I'm using the Rdb odbc driver the file def is a bit different but
I tried some things none of which worked.  Assuming "alias you defined"
is the name of the file dsn there was nothing in the file that looked
like the file dsn name I gave it (tom1).  Also there was no "DBQ"  It 
looked like:
[ODBC]
DRIVER=Oracle ODBC Driver for Rdb
DBA=W

If I remove the DRIVER line from the file I get "Data source name not found
and no default driver specified" no matter what else is in the file.
Left it in and tried adding DSN=W, DSN=tom1, removing DBA, modifying DBA=tom1,
Adding DBQ=W and so forth.  Endless permutations.  No luck.  I'll try
sending email to kgronau from the bug db seeing of he can expand on
his workaround.  

Thanks.  Btw, the files are in c:\Program Files\Common Files\ODBC\Data Sources

Diane


regarding the -7778 error I found a bug, its number is 478285.
Please take a look at it.

erich

Hi,

I sent email to the person in Germany who discovered the workaround
but he couldn't help.  I called the customer anyway and he said

  1.  The oracle odbc driver is not a problem anyway.  Although the
one that oracle provides is not level 3 compliant (reason for bug 478285),
Microsoft wrote an oracle odbc driver that is level 3 compliant so
people can use that.  But he believes MS will never be writing a
level 3 compliant driver for Rdb.

  2.  Re: the workaround.  He says there is an article in MS's knowledge
base that tells you how to modify the files created by defining file
dsns (in \Program Files\Common Files\ODBC\Data Sources.  What you do
is modify the file so that it points to a user DSN.  Then it will use
the user dsn.  This looks like what kgronau was doing by defining
dsn=<alias you defined>  Alias must be a user dsn.  He has never got
this to work.

I just tried it.  I defined a user data source name called 'mf_personnel70.'
Put DSN=mf_personnel70 and DSN='mf_personnel70' into the file.  Didn't
work.  Then I deleted every line out of the file except [ODBC] and
this worked.

Diane