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15 MySQL ODBC Support

MySQL provides support for ODBC by means of the MyODBC program.

15.1 Operating systems supported by MyODBC

MyODBC is a 32-bit ODBC (2.50) level 0 driver for Windows95 and Windows NT. We hope somebody will port it to Windows 3.x.

15.2 How to report problems with MyODBC

ODBC has been tested with Access, Admndemo.exe, C++-Builder, Centura Team Developer (formerly Gupta SQL/Windows), ColdFusion (on Solaris), Crystal Reports, Delphi, Excel, iHTML, FileMaker Pro, FoxPro, Notes 4.5/4.6, SBSS, perl DBD-ODBC, Paradox, Powerbuilder, VC++ and Visual Basic.

If you know of any other application that works with MyODBC, please mail myodbc@tcx.se about this!

If you encounter difficulties, we would like to have the log file from the ODBC manager (the log you get when requesting logs from ODBCADMIN) and a MyODBC log. This will help shed some light on any problems.

To get a MyODBC log, please tag the 'Trace MyODBC' option flag in the MyODBC connect/configure screen. The log will be written to file `c:\myodbc.log'. Note that you must use MYSQL.DLL and not MYSQL2.DLL for this option to work!

15.3 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.

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.

15.4 How to fill in the various fields in the ODBC administrator program

There are three possibilities for specifying the server name on Windows95:

Use the IP address of the server.
Add a file `lmhosts' with the following info:
```
ip hostname
```
For example:
```
194.216.84.21 my
```
Configure the PC to use DNS.

Example of how to fill in the "ODBC setup":

Windows DSN name:   test
Description:        This is my test database
MySql Database:     test
Server:             194.216.84.21
User:               monty
Password:           my_password
Port:

The value for the Windows DSN name field is any name that is unique in your windows ODBC setup.

You don't have to specify values for the Server, User, Password or Port fields in the ODBC setup screen. However, if you do, the values will be used as the defaults later when you attempt to make a connection. You have the option of changing the values at that time.

If the port number is not given, the default port (3306) is used.

15.5 How to get the value of an `AUTO_INCREMENT` column in ODBC

A common problem is how to get the value of an automatically-generated ID from an INSERT. With ODBC, you can do something like this (assuming that auto is an AUTO_INCREMENT field):

INSERT INTO foo (auto,text) VALUES(NULL,'text');
SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID();

Or, if you are just going to insert the ID into another table, you can do this:

INSERT INTO foo (auto,text) VALUES(NULL,'text');
INSERT INTO foo2 (id,text) VALUES(LAST_INSERT_ID(),'text');

For the benefit of some ODBC applications (at least Delphi and Access), the following query can be used to find a newly-inserted row:

SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE auto IS NULL;