> ""Kyle Cordes"" <kyle@...> wrote in message

> > The striking thing about this is that to faciliate broader use, what
> > Firebird would really benefit from would *one* ODBC driver and *one*
> > OLE-DB driver, of high quality and rich feature set, well tested,

and

> > "in the box" so to speak.


> From: "Claudio Valderrama C." <cvalde@...>

> As long as there are 2 commercial ODBC drivers, I don't have any proof
> of
> your suggestion that none of those work. There are two commercial

OLE/DB

I did not intend to suggest or assert that none of them work. In fact,
all of them may be perfect.

My suggestion is that to help broaden use of Firebird (or Interbase for
that matter), user expectations must be met. Users have come to expect
(rightfully so!) that databases will ship with drivers needed to access
them using the various common mechanisms, and the drivers will work
well.

The existance of additional drivers doesn't bother me at all - it's the
absence of one.

> The problem is not quality, but maturity. IB had a driver that from an
> internal tech POV was good (Visigenic) but it didn't work well in
> practice.

"Works well in practice" is the quality metric which I seek in a ODBC
driver.

> Then a second driver was asked to Merant, the self-proclaimed ODBC

[...]

> implementation. The XTG driver started as an internal driver for one

[...]

> have the free, open source Starkey driver (odbc-jdbc) that started a

[...]

> I've tested the Russian OLE/DB driver and I'm satisfied with it. I

made

Thank you for the information about the various drivers - it is much
appreciated as I try to figure out which one to use. I will flag and
keep your message for future reference! It also demonstrates my point,
thought - the user need to know way too much to get it to work.

> perspective... but only a few core developers. We would have to be
> completely mad to start ourselves a separate effort like a driver.

I agree. Is that incompatible with selecting one and putting it in the
box? Surely *at least one* of the choices in each category is of high
enough quality to justify this...

> Furthermore, people want a plethora of different drivers, and that's

Are you sure? Or are they just surfing from driver to driver, hoping
the next one they try will be the one that works?

> Usually, Microsoft coerces the market by favoring one tools developer
> that

I don't see what any of this has to do with Microsoft, except that
Microsoft has set customer expectations high by shipping working ODBC
and OLE-DB drivers with their database.

> I prefer things as they are. It shouldn't be big pain to select

between

> two
> commercial ODBC drivers and if you love the "helped and favored" ones,

I don't mind paying for software. But it's strange to get a very good
database (as open source or commercial), then learn that it's missing a
vital component (ODBC driver!) and there are two competing other
products to fill that hole.

Interesting, that same consideration does not apply to data access
products like IBObjects, since IBO is a specialized products with
various value-added features (tight Delphi integration). It applies
only to things that a reasonable user expects to the "in the box".

[ Kyle Cordes * kyle@... * http://kylecordes.com ]
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