Sybase access via COBOL on VMS

[Warren Anderson_2]

We currently use an in-house written JDBC based API to connect to our remote Sybase databases. We are looking for a comerically supported product that is more robust.

[Willem Grooters]

Attunity (http://www.attunity.com). You'll need to install on VMS and on your Sybase platform.

Willem

[Mobeen_1]

Warren,
We used to connect using the Sybase Open Client but then its been quite some time since Sybase has dropped support for the same

regards
Mobeen

[Willem Grooters]

I got these possibilities form a Sybase guru I know:

-OpenClient (in SDK of Sybase)
-DbLib (in SDK of Sybase)
-jConnect (Sybase JDBC)
-FreeTDS (OpenSource)
-ODBC
-Embedded SQL (Cobol, C)

jConnect and FreeTDS could be the best options. It may depend on what system your Sybase database is running (and what version)

Willem

[Craig A Berry · Accepted solution]

A bit of clarification here. FreeTDS is a drop-in, open source replacement for the Sybase Open Client libraries. It provides the ctlib and dblib interfaces, as well as an ODBC driver. I'm finding it quite useful, and rumor has it Sybase themselves are using it in their Mac OS X client, but it is not a commercially supported product.

Calling any of these interfaces (ctlib, dblib, ODBC) from COBOL will require buying or building a layer that translates string descriptors into null-terminated C strings. I seem to remember Attunity has something like this with their ODBC client.

Attunity is not the only ODBC client vendor for VMS. There is also OpenRDA:

http://www.atinet.com/products/openrda/unix_overview.asp

and I think EasySoft also has OpenVMS support:

http://www.easysoft.com/products/products.phtml

I think all the commercial ODBC client vendors have their own service that runs on the target server, which in turn connects to the database. There are some architectural advantages to this, and some disadvantages. As far as cost and management complexity, there are only disadvantages.

Someone suggested embedded SQL. Even when Sybase was supported on VMS I don't think there were any precompilers for it. It's possible, though, that Attunity has something in that arena since given their architecture they would only have to do it once, not a different one for each database.