GNat Ada 95 Database Environment - (GNADE)

Version 1.3.2

Editor M.Erdmann

14.4.2001

Contents

This release of the GNADE project is intended for building with the GNU Ada Translator on the platforms Linux, Solaris and Windows NT/95/2000. This release covers beside bug corrections, a revised installation procedure and a CLOSE STATMENT <name> clause for dynamic SQL, the following features:

• An extensive thin Ada 95 binding to the ODBC interfaces.
• ISO/92 compliant embedded SQL translator which is able to process Ada 95 packages and files containing only one procedure. The translator creates Ada 95 source files working on top the of the ODBC interface.
• Installation support for some commonly known data base products (see below).
• Documentation in HTML, Postscript and PDF format.
• Native Ada 95 bindings for MySQL and Postgres.
• GNU specific include clause which allows to access the ODBC handles via embedded SQL. This allows to mix embedded SQL and low level ODBC programing in a single source (see chapter in documentation).
• DECLARE TABLE is used to generate parts of the schema files (-schema option).
• Support of embedded SQL.

• Support of Oracle Lite on MS Windows 95
• Support of MySQL with MS ODBC Drivers on Windows 95
• Unicode support on the ODBC interface.
• The connection clause has been extended by the ON clause in order to intercept typical connection errors and to define a reaction on ESQL level as shown below:

  CONNECT ......

  [ ON [COMMUNICATION|AUTHORIZATION|OTHER] ERROR [RAISE|GOTO|DO] <target> ]

• A new GNADE implemenation defined data types as VARCHAR and VARBINARY. For details please refere to the documentation and the example attachment.gpq in samples/esql.
• Ada 95 Binding to the Oracle call interface.
• The experimental Ada Database Connectivity (ADBC) - API.

  The idea of this interface is to provide a binding which makes application relativly independant of the unterlying data base. The interface is not yet stable (refer to http://gnade.sourceforge.net/ado.html)

Supported Databases

Even the GNADE project except for the native data base bindings is expected to work with all ODBC compliant data base products. The following products are known to work with GNADE assuming, that you are using the correct driver manager (see section "Other Components").

The GNADE project installation procedure provides for theses product test data bases. If your data base is not listed below, the GNADE project will be very likely usable but the test data base has to be installed manually.

Copyright, License and Authors

The GNU Public License (GPL) applies with the following extension to all software components in this release

As a special exception, if other files instantiate generics from GNADE Ada units, or you link GNADE Ada units or libraries with other files to produce an executable, these units or libraries do not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU Public License.

The documentation has been put under the Free GNU Documentation License.

The authors and copyright holders of the GNADE project are:

Contact

New Features

Restrictions

• The package names of the OCI binding are not yet lined up with the GNADE package hirarchy. This allignment will be done with the next version. The build process currently creates no test client automatically since the build scripts are only available for windows.
• The ADBC interface is currently only a draft version and not complete
• The VARBINARY data type has only been tested with Mimer SQL.
• The configuration procedure for Solaris has not been tested completely. If it fails please use the Makefiles in the directory ./win32. These files are known to build a working installation under Solaris.
• The Object Ada Compiler is known to fail compiling the ODBC bindings because of insufficient compliance to the Ada 95 RM.
• The compilation of the ODBC bindings is known to fail on a Sun SPARC using GNADE 1.13p (ACT tracking number [8925-002] Gigi abort code 411 on SPARC architectures).
• The Option -compiler has been added to allow the support of specific of different Ada 95 compilers which has currently no effect.
• Unicode support is only available begining with UnixODBC version 2.0
• Oracle 8i requires the declaration of string hostvariable to be 1 character larger then the domain size, e.g. assuming the size of the domain Ename from the example simple to be 20, the host variables have to be defined as:

  Ename           :   Char (1..21); 
  Dept_Name   :   Char (1..21); 
  Location        :   Char (1..21);
  
  The automatic installation is not supported in case of Oracle 8i but the installation script is located under samples.

  .

Fixed Problems

Problems reported earlier then 0.9o are listed in the release note 1.1.2.

Known Problems

Installation

The GNADE code and the documentation is distributed in the following files:

The installation of this software requires the following components:

The autoconf utility is only required on Linux/Unix Systems if the configuration scripts have to be changed. For window systems a special set of makefiles in the directory ./win32 is provided which are not using the autoconf facility.

Installation on Linux/Unix

Unpacking and Configuration

$ gunzip -c gnade-src-linux-gnu-<version>.tar.gz | tar xvf -
$ cd gnade-src-linux-gnu-<version>
$ ./configure <dbname>

As dbname the following values are allowed.

• mimer - MimerSQL
• postgres - PostgreSQL
• MySQL - MySQL

If the value is omitted because your data base product is not listed,, all subsequent steps regarding the data base installation may be skipped and you have to install the test database manually.

Installation of the Database

Depending on the installation of the data base you have specified in the configure script command, you have to execute the following step either by using a DBA account our you may use your own user account.

$ su ..dba..
$ make createuser

After the database and the database user has been configured, the ODBC interface has to be configured. The directory ./samples/sample_db contains sample files for the unixODBC driver manager. The files odbc.ini.sample odbcinst.ini.sample have to be copied to /etc/odbc.ini and /etc/ odbcinst.ini.sample.

Compiling an testing

After the creation of the data base user, the final build may be done by:

$ make

Test code is located under ./samples. In order to test the functionality of the ODBC interface use the examples in ./odbc or ./esql.

If it does not work

If this installation procedure fails you may use the Makefile under ./win32. This makefile is known to work at least on Solaris well if the correct driver manager is installed (see section other components).

Installation on Windows NT

For window users a zip file is provided. In order to install perform the following steps:

> unzip gnade-src-linux-gnu-<version>.zip
> cd gnade-src-linux-gnu-<version>/win32
> make 
                                   
The issue regarding the installation of a data base user has to be done by hand. 
The windows makefile  uses the make.conf file which is prebuilt by the ./configure script. Any configuration
change has to be done there. Please refer to the README file in ./win32.

Other components

The following Driver Manager are known to work with the release:

The iODBC 3.04 implementation on Solaris seems to have a problem with the handling of cursor states. It should not be used.

Contributions

Special regards to the following persons which have contributed to the project:

Document Version: $Date: 2002/04/06 14:33:52 $ $Revision: 1.2 $