Re: [Iodbc-macosx] mac odbc and unicode

[iODBC M. <io...@op...>]

HI Xan,

> Thank you for the quick reply.
>
>> Since 3.51.0 iODBC has included Unicode support including Driver 
>> Manager conversions from non-unicode apps to unicode drivers and vise 
>> versa.
>
>
> Great.  A few more questions:
>
> Does this mean I have to bundle an updated library with my apps, or 
> are the Panther libs already using this code allowing me to just use 
> the updated headers?
>
Panter libs as supplied by Apple are based on iODBC 3.0.6 as far as i 
could quickly determine and do not contain these functions. Do a strings 
on your libiodbc.so and grep for iODBC. You should see a line similar to 
this:

    @(#)iODBC driver manager 3.52.2

If you have a version 3.51.0 or greater, then you have Unicode support.

You can download a binary SDK from the www.iodbc.org site which contains 
the Framework version of  iODBC Driver Manager (libiodbc),  iODBC 
installer library (libiodbcinst) and the Carbon based iODBC 
Administrator and support panels. This package provides a tighter 
coupling between Driver Manager and GUI components. You can add the 
installer package to your installer as part of your own application.

Alternatively you can download the source code from www.iodbc.org and 
build either a framework or a more traditional GNU type build of iODBC 
(the type that Apple ships) out of the box. This build does not contain 
the graphical extentions, but if your application just needs ODBC access 
you can build a static libiodbc.a library. This allows you to ship your 
application without any external reference to the driver manager, and 
use whatever GUI administrator, either the version from Apple or the 
version from iODBC.org, on your customers machine.

> I'm using the CFM Bridge so that I can get the Data Source Chooser UI, 
> and the CFM Bridge doesn't have the "W" functions.  Do I have to 
> abandon the Data Source Chooser UI to use the W functions?  Or can I 
> put together some hybrid where I use the CFM Bridge only for the 
> SQLDriverConnect and then use the W functions for access.
>
With the version from iODBC.org you should be able to do what you want. 
You are also able to mix even the GUI components from Apple with the 
non-graphical driver manager in your application, only you cannot use a 
full Unicode DSN name that way as the Graphical code does not handle it, 
but a normal english DSN name will do.

> Finally, is this something transparent to drivers? Or do I and my 
> users need special Unicode drivers?
>
Well, if your driver does not have Unicode support, e.g. it needs to 
export SQLConnectW etc functions present, the iODBC driver manager will 
translate Unicode strings to UTF-8 and pass them onto the driver. All 
results from the driver are treated as UTF-8 and translated back into 
Unicode results.


Best regards,

Patrick
-- 

Patrick van Kleef            Email : <io...@op...>
Maintainer iODBC             Web   : <http://www.iodbc.org>
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