16.3 Programs known to work with MyODBC

Most programs should work with MyODBC, but for each of those listed below, we have tested it ourselves or gotten confirmation from some user that it works:

Program

Comment

Access

To make Access work:

• You should have a primary key in the table.
• You should have a timestamp in all tables you want to be able to update.
• Only use double float fields. Access fails when comparing with single floats.
• Set the `Return matching rows' option field when connecting to MySQL.
• Access on NT will report BLOB columns as OLE OBJECTS. If you want to have MEMO columns instead, you should change the column to TEXT with ALTER TABLE.
• Access can't always handle DATE columns properly. If you have a problem with these, change the columns to DATETIME.
• In some cases, Access may generate illegal SQL queries that MySQL can't understand. You can fix this by selecting "Query|SQLSpecific|Pass-Through" from the Access menu.

DataJunction

You have to change it to output VARCHAR rather than ENUM, as it exports the latter in a manner that causes MySQL grief.

Excel

Works. Some tips:

• If you have problems with dates, try to select them as strings using the CONCAT() function. For example:

  select CONCAT(rise_time), CONCAT(set_time)
      from sunrise_sunset;
  

  Values retrieved as strings this way should be correctly recognized as time values by Excel97. The purpose of CONCAT() in this example is to fool ODBC into thinking the column is of ``string type''. Without the CONCAT(), ODBC knows the column is of time type, and Excel does not understand that. Note that this is a bug in Excel, because it automatically converts a string to a time. This would be great if the source was a text file, but is plain stupid when the source is an ODBC connection that reports exact types for each column.

odbcadmin

Test program for ODBC.

Delphi

You must use DBE 3.2 or newer. Set the `Don't optimize column width' option field when connecting to MySQL. Also, here is some potentially useful delphi code that sets up both an ODBC entry and a BDE entry for MyODBC (the BDE entry requires a BDE Alias Editor which may be had for free at a Delphi Super Page near you.): (Thanks to Bryan Brunton bryan@flesherfab.com for this)

fReg:= TRegistry.Create;
  fReg.OpenKey('\Software\ODBC\ODBC.INI\DocumentsFab', True);
  fReg.WriteString('Database', 'Documents');
  fReg.WriteString('Description', ' ');
  fReg.WriteString('Driver', 'C:\WINNT\System32\myodbc.dll');
  fReg.WriteString('Flag', '1');
  fReg.WriteString('Password', '');
  fReg.WriteString('Port', ' ');
  fReg.WriteString('Server', 'xmark');
  fReg.WriteString('User', 'winuser');
  fReg.OpenKey('\Software\ODBC\ODBC.INI\ODBC Data Sources', True);
  fReg.WriteString('DocumentsFab', 'MySQL');
  fReg.CloseKey;
  fReg.Free;

  Memo1.Lines.Add('DATABASE NAME=');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('USER NAME=');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('ODBC DSN=DocumentsFab');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('OPEN MODE=READ/WRITE');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('BATCH COUNT=200');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('LANGDRIVER=');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('MAX ROWS=-1');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('SCHEMA CACHE DIR=');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('SCHEMA CACHE SIZE=8');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('SCHEMA CACHE TIME=-1');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('SQLPASSTHRU MODE=SHARED AUTOCOMMIT');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('SQLQRYMODE=');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('ENABLE SCHEMA CACHE=FALSE');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('ENABLE BCD=FALSE');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('ROWSET SIZE=20');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('BLOBS TO CACHE=64');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('BLOB SIZE=32');

  AliasEditor.Add('DocumentsFab','MySQL',Memo1.Lines);

C++Builder

Tested with BDE 3.0. The only known problem is that when the table schema changes, query fields are not updated. BDE however does not seem to recognize primary keys, only the index PRIMARY, though this has not been a problem.

Visual basic

To be able to update a table, you must define a primary key for the table.