Dear fellows,

I am working with an ODBC compliant SCADA software that needs to interface with another system. However, the other system vendor is resisting ODBC's use with the following four arguments.
a.. ODBC is not reliable.
a.. ODBC is not Secure.
a.. ODBC is Complex to set up.
a.. ODBC is hard to keep operational.
I have used ODBC in past, but my experience is limited. Can someone provide some help in this issue.

Thanks in advance:

Babar

 

I have evaluated ODBC drivers several times...

Look at the Data Direct products from Merant.

www.merant.com


William F. Hullsiek
MES Software Engineer

 

I think someone wants to lock you into a specific database product...

ODBC is eight years old and has almost universal support. All the issues your vendor mentions would seem to be driver related rather than ODBC specification-related. Perhaps he is trying to dissuade you because his driver is a buggy piece of junk ;-)

Andy Piereder
Pinnacle IDC

 

I use ODBC a lot for Sybase database connections. I find that it works for me. It adds another step to the process of setting up the database connection. I could go directly to Sybase using their libraries, but I use ODBC because in the MS world it provides me with transparency to the database - I could switch out Sybase with another and my code doesn't change (given I use standard SQL).

I find that ODBC is reliable. It meets my security needs for industrial automation. It adds another step to the setup. It is not hard to keep operational.

If I wanted my source to work on multiple operating systems then I would consider bypassing ODBC. Last time I looked ODBC was not found on another operating system.

 

The one thing they left out is:

a.. ODBC works and lowers integration costs

Anything involving Windows will have some reliability issues but the ODBC works as well as Windows works. There are always a million reasons to not use an existing standard and none of them benefit the user.

Regards,
Ralph Mackiewicz
SISCO, Inc.

 

Jamil -

The first time I had to mess with ODBC I was concern about it. It seems to me that whenever Microsoft is involved in the automation game I feel less secure ... bugs an all... BUT it was so easy to import an export that today we always consider ODBC in any data transfer. Once the base is establish, you do not even thinck about what's going on in the backgrounf ... maybe this is not the case with big data transfers but for small systems we never had any problems with this tools...

The only problems was having a PC gatering the data on the network instead of a real DB Server... and Win9x as the client/server host instead of WinNT.

Real easy to learn and configure ... just like SQL.

Pierre

 

As an interesting side note, ODBC is not actually a Microsoft technology. It can actually be categorized as an open standard, albeit one that most people have had exposure to because of Microsoft.

Just had to share,

Jeff