CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonodbc
Andrew Kou
Andrew Kou

Reputation: 7115

What is the problem with ODBC as a technology?

Recently Zed Shaw (a programmer who blogs) mentioned that ODBC references should be removed from the popular python book Dive into Python. I have never worked with ODBC and I just wanted to understand why ODBC is so "bad". What are the pros and cons of the technology? What alternatives are there?

Upvotes: 9

Views: 2299

Answers (3)

Maury Markowitz
Maury Markowitz

Reputation: 9283

Just to add to Cat's comment: it seems that many JDBC drivers are very thin wrappers over ODBC code, or alternately, that a particular ODBC and JDBC driver may be thin wrappers over common code "below" it.

There was a time when ODBC was also slow/buggy. It gained a bad reputation, and MS's insistence on introducing a new data access technology every n years meant that their ODBC drivers didn't improve, while their new system copy-n-pasted many of the bugs over (as is the case in the gawd-awful text driver). However, those who had no other system, like the iODBC guys, plugged on and ended up with a suite of powerful, solid and fast drivers. Any early complaints about performance were addressed long-ago.

My main complaint with ODBC today is the driver installation overhead. JDBC can do that on-the-fly, which is much easier on everyone from the user to the IT department.

Upvotes: 1

dugres
dugres

Reputation: 13103

ODBC is the only way I've found to access a Solid DB Server from Python.
If you have no other choice, it could be a life saver.

Upvotes: 1

Keith Adler
Keith Adler

Reputation: 21178

The biggest issue is that 64 Bit support is not entirely available across different data sources. Another problem is that people often bridge ODBC from another technology where they could simply eliminate the unnecessary layers of complexity. For example, JDBC->ODBC when they could simply go JDBC direct.

Upvotes: 2

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