From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2003-03-15T09:42:35+09:00
Subject: Re: DBI and MSAccess

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Frey" <peterfrey@sympatico.ca>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 2:42 PM
Subject: Re: DBI and MSAccess


> > My impression is that DBI only interfaces with
> > the existing database software, i.e., you would
> > have to have Access installed in order for this
> > to work.
> >
> > Hal
> >
> >
>
> No, Access does not need to be installed.  You can access a *.mdb database
> through ODBC directly.  For example Word and Excell can access such
> databases.  VB or Delphi and other tools can, too.
> ODBC is much more than just an API; if you use Microsoft's MDAC you can
even
> do SQL joins of two databases that are created by very different engines
> like FoxPro( *.dbf ) and Access (*.mdb).  This means ODBC itself PARSES
SQL!
> (That's why there are options for 'direct' SQL, i.e.: give it to the
> database without parsing)
> No wonder ODBC can be such a temperamental thing...

That's nice to know. Thanks...

Hal