[OPEN-ILS-DEV] ODBC connection to Evergreen

[Mike Rylander]

On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 4:18 PM, Frances Dean McNamara
<fdmcnama at uchicago.edu> wrote:
> Question, do people use MS Access with Evergreen?  Would I install an ODBC
> driver on my workstation?  Has anyone done this?
>

There are known uses of ODBC connectors, but not from Access to the
best of my knowledge.  I wouldn't suggest connecting to a main
production Evergreen database using ODBC in any case, as the ODBC SQL
dialect is rather restrictive, and Acess even more so.  There are
structures used that I would very surprised to find Access able to
handle.  If you do decided to go this route, though, I strongly
suggest doing so with a reporting-only replica of any production
installation (which I realize isn't there just yet ... but I felt I
should mention it up front) -- it's just too easy to remove or
otherwise mangle live data, not to mention the load concerns of
accidental full outer joins (it happens to the best of us ;) ).

Another option is to use pgAdmin-III*, which is a native Postgres
administration utility.

* http://www.pgadmin.org/

>
>
> We frequently run MS Access against our current Sybase database to do
> reports and sometimes I use it to upload tables of data.  It might be
> useful.
>

I'd be inclined to suggest Crystal Reports or Business Objects for
custom ad-hoc reporting.

As for uploading tables of data ... there really aren't tables of data
to upload into Evergreen.  The database is exposed through user
interfaces, and other than some tables that will be getting an
interface as of 1.4, there's not much to directly edit.  Generally
speaking, the data isn't laid out for human use, it's laid out for
efficiency and machine use.

So, long answer short, it should be possible, but nobody is using
Access today and it wouldn't be recommended for a production system.
Even if that's not really the answer you were looking for I hope that
helps!

-- 
Mike Rylander
 | VP, Research and Design
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
 | phone: 1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email: miker at esilibrary.com
 | web: http://www.esilibrary.com