Hi Mje,

Well apart from the install which proved a nightmare under Kubuntu 9.04, but mysteriously cleared up under 9.10 see Installing DBD::ODBC, in the end I gave up using ODBC for the Firebird 2.1 connection because I couldn't get the DATE (and I think also number formats) to work and there were a number of other stability issues which I can't remember. Instead I used the DBI::Interbase driver, while it works, it is subject to occasional crashes, so I'd like to go back to trying ODBC, if it turned out to be more stable.

My current main ODBC problem is that if I use isql on employee.fbd, (eg select first 1 change_date from salary_history), I get:

1992-12-15 00:00:00. (Data type TIMESTAMP)

if I use it on my own database, (eg select first 1 att_patient_examination_dtd from tbl_patient_exam), I get:

22256-10-18. (Data type DATE)

Any ideas what I could do?

Surely the DATE format should work? Other applications like Flamerobin have no such problems on the same field and they don't crash either.

Regards

Steve

I see I commented on the thread you mention and I would not describe it as a nightmare. DBD::ODBC needs an ODBC driver manager but as it is XS code it also needs the driver manager header files. Many Linux distributions distribute the header files in different packages and you hadn't installed the development package.

I cannot say why isql is returning a timestamp but I'd guess this is down to the ODBC driver and not unixODBC or DBD::ODBC (neither of which change data types). Many bugs in ODBC drivers are attributed to earlier elements of the ODBC stack, e.g., isql perhaps in this case or unixODBC or DBD::ODBC. I'm guessing when you see a date, you are not using the ODBC driver.

It may also help to know which ODBC driver you are using.

unixODBC and DBD::ODBC have been around for years and years. I'm not going to say they are perfect and have no bugs but they are mature and pretty stable in most peoples definition of stable.

Yes, I thought it was the driver too, I used libOdbcFb.so from the file OdbcFb-LIB-RC1-2.0.0148.amd64.tar.gz.