Article 173115 of comp.os.vms: >From: SMTP%"osuaggie@aol.com" 1-JUL-1997 13:29:25.46 >To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com >CC: >Subj: accessing odbc db's from OpenVMS > >Anyone know any methods,madness,software,etc for accessing an odbc >compliant database from OpenVMS??? > > >The Aggie >OSUAggie@aol.com Hello. I had the same need about nine months ago. My company was trying to populate an Informix database running on a Sun box from the VAXen. Since Informix dropped their VMS support, we had to use an ODBC client for VMS. As you may have found, there seems to be no shortage of VMS ODBC servers but there isn't much out there in the way of ODBC clients for VMS. Since we had no choice (at the time) of which database and platform to use, the only product we could use turned out to be an ODBC client from OpenLink. (See www.openlinksw.com. We ordered a demo and after about three days were able to talk to the Informix database. Again, since our choices were limited, we went ahead and ordered the product. The small tests worked OK but once we tried to store any volume of data the Openlink software would constantly crash. We repeatedly contacted tech support (they are in the UK) and they usually took a couple days even to acknowledge the call. They would email back a suggestion and when that didn't work we would reply and the process would start all over again. The problem definitely seems to be with the product, not in the amount data. We were only trying to store around 10,000 records which were about 500 bytes each. One thing we noticed is that the object libraries had lots of compilation warnings. We mentioned this to OpenLink but they didn't even acknowledge it. After repeated emails and phone calls to tech support, we attempted to elevate the problem. At this point OpenLink stopped returning any phone calls or emails. Apparently they don't care much about the VMS version of their product. Our company ended up scrapping the Informix/OpenLink combination and going with Oracle (still on the Sun box) since Oracle is pretty well supported and has a VMS gateway. You may be wondering why I replied with all this since you were just asking about an ODBC client for VMS. There are two reasons: 1) I went through the same product search and could only find this one product after weeks of searching. 2) I wanted to warn others about our experience with this company. I sent this using my personal email rather than my corporate email so as to avoid setting up any potential liabilities for my company. The opinions expressed here are my own and are not necessarily those of my company. So, if you absolutely have to have the VMS client, you may want to look at OpenLink. However, make sure you test very thoroughly before sending them any money. Also, if you do happen to find any new ODBC clients for VMS, I would appreciate hearing about it. Good luck! Bill McLaughlin