Access Optim archive data from pre-packaged applications on Linux and UNIX platforms

Open standards can be used via Optim http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13722.html ">open Data Manager,optim" (such as ODBC, JDBC, or XML) provides continuous access to archived data. Learn the difference between the available methods for accessing Optim archived data in the linux®/unix® environment, and how to configure ODBC in a Linux environment to access Optim archive data using reporting tools such as IBM cognos®.

Optim Open Data Manager (ODM) allows third-party applications to access Optim archive data using standard mechanisms such as Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), Java™ Database Connectivity (JDBC), and XML. With the Optim ODM, the Business reporting tool retrieves Optim archived data as if it were in a relational database. The Optim ODM is implemented using Optim Connect (server and thin client) and uses a special driver named Pst_gdb to access Optim archive files and collections.

Optim provides two thin clients to provide connectivity to Third-party applications: Optim Connect ODBC thin client and Optim connect JDBC thin client. The use of JDBC thin clients is similar to all platforms supported by Optim, but for ODBC thin clients, the setup steps vary depending on the platform. This article focuses on the process of setting up a Optim Connect ODBC thin Client for the Linux/unix environment. Considerations for how to use the JDBC thin client and XML utilities are also discussed in the article.

As shown in Figure 1, the Optim ODM allows uniform access to Optim archived data.

Figure 1. Access the active application's data and archive from the application

ODBC and Driver Manager background

Although some applications can be directly integrated with ODBC drivers, the common scenario is to define an ODBC data source name (DSN) and have the application use ODBC DSN through the driver manager. ODBC DSN provides connection-related information, such as Server IP, port and user/password, and drivers.

A driver manager performs multiple tasks for an application, including:

Most calls to the driver manager are passed to the loaded driver for further processing, but the application is indifferent. Some of the advantages of using the ODBC driver Manager include:

The driver manager typically provides interfaces for applications to dynamically connect and run SQL, loading the specified driver for the application to connect to. In the Optim example above, when installing Optim connect in a non-Windows environment, it is necessary to integrate the Optim connect driver with a Third-party driver manager. Two of the most common driver managers for Linux and UNIX are Unixodbc and IODBC. In this article, we will use UNIXODBC. The steps to set up UNIXODBC and set iODBC are similar, and the difference between them is usually the file path or file name.

As mentioned above, some applications can be integrated directly with the ODBC driver, but it is recommended that you use the driver Manager.

Figure 2. Using the Driver Manager