Pentaho Driver Class could not be found, make sure the Generic
Database Driver (Jar File) is installed
Where can I get a generic database driver? Nothing comes up when I do a Google search.
This wasn't very helpful. Anyone have any advice?
There is no such thing as a generic jdbc driver.
The difference between generic jdbc connection and others is the following:
for specific connections the user sets the hostname, port, username&password and eventually some other optional fields (such as instance for mssql); In generic connection user must specify the full url and the driver class.
Specific connections sometimes have some extra intelligence embedded (e.g. getName vs getAlias in MySQL); generic connections don’t do that type of post-processing, whatever comes from the jdbc driver is added to the stream.
So, to set up a generic connection (for sake of argument, let’s say postgres), you need the full postgres jdbc url, the driver class name and credentials. If you need to switch to a different type of database (say Oracle) you can use variables for the driver class name and url. But the driver is still a specific one.
When should you use a generic connection?
if you need to switch target db types in runtime (though beware that SQL syntax may vary)
If the database you want to connect to isn’t in the list of supported databases
If you need a different driver class than the one set up in the specific connection (e.g, MySQL 5.x vs MySQL 8)
If your connection requires some tweaks to the url from what the default url provided by the jdbc driver says
But if you want to connect to MySQL 8 using a generic connection you still need a MySQL 8 JDBC driver.
I am trying to set up an .accdb as a datasource on the reporting server. The database is local on the server and I have followed all the instructions to create a 32 bit and a 64 bit ODBC connection for .mdb and .accdb. I set up the data source on the Report Manager site as ODBC with dsn=dbname and test the connection and it is successful.
From the Report Manager site, I open a report in Report Builder. I add a dataset and point to the shared connection. Test connection is successful.
I create a new data set based on this data source and click Query Designer and get this error: Unable to Connect to Datasource dbname. ERROR [IM014] [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] The specified DSN contains an architecture mismatch between the Driver and Application.
Then I prompted for credentials. Of course nothing works there. And this particular .accdb has only Admin with no password anyway. All users can access it.
The error makes me think there's a 32 bit vs 64 bit conflict. The .accdb is 32 bit, but Report Manager only sees it with the 64 bit connection, then tanks when I try to create the data set.
I've set the same odbc connections up on my local machine and on the server. Still no dice. Any and all help would be appreciated.
I kept working on this and was able to create a data source with the following connection string:
Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb, *.accdb)};Dbq=\server\path\database.accdb;Uid=Admin;Pwd=;
I edited the report and used query builder to test the query and results. Query builder allows me to see results. Yay! Progress!
But now when I preview/run the report I get the following:
An error has occurred during report processing. (rsProcessingAborted)
Query execution failed for dataset 'dataset1'. (rsErrorExecutingCommand)
For more information about this error navigate to the report server on the local server machine, or enable remote errors.
Any ideas?
I was able to make this work. I had to install the 32 and 64 bit drivers on both the reporting server and the local (editing) machine. I created identical DSNs (32 bit and 64 bit) on each machine. Then set up the datasource with an OLE DB connection string.
Once complete, I was able to write reports against the database (but not browse tables). Other users could access the report from their own machines without the ODBC connections or drivers installed.
We'll call this a win. On to the next problem.
I'm trying to connect to a SQL Server 2016 database in RStudio. I'm using RStudio on my laptop. I could remote in to the server and install RStudio there if it were absolutely necessary, but working locally has massive advantages so I would really prefer that if it were possible. Connection with the server goes through a VPN (FortiClient) that I have running on my laptop.
On this server, there are two SQL Server instances. One is a SQL Server 2012 edition, which is the default instance and hence not named - it used to be the only instance on this server. The other one is the 2016 edition. This instance was set up more recently in order to use the R integration capabilities new to SQL Server 2016. Because the server already had a default instance, this instance had to be named and it hence is called DEVR.
When I access the instances in SSMS and click 'Properties', the name of the default instance is DWH-ACC and the 2016 instance is called DWH-ACC\DEVR.
This is the code I'm running in RStudio to test my connection:
server <- "[IP-ADDRESS]\\DWH-ACC\\DEVR"
databaseName <- "Database"
user <- "user"
pwd <- "password"
sqlShareDir <- "C:\\Dir"
sqlWait <- TRUE
sqlConsoleOutput <- FALSE
sampleDataQuery <- "SELECT TOP 10 FROM [dbo].[Table]"
cc <- RxInSqlServer(server = server, databaseName = databaseName, user = user, password = pwd, shareDir = sqlShareDir, wait = sqlWait, consoleOutput = sqlConsoleOutput)
rxSetComputeContext(cc)
inDataSource <- RxSqlServerData(sqlQuery = sampleDataQuery, server=server, databaseName=databaseName, user=user, password=pwd, stringsAsFactors=TRUE, rowsPerRead=500)
rxGetVarInfo(data = inDataSource)
I've tried several options for the server specification, among which [IP-ADDRESS]\\DEVR and [IP-ADDRESS]/DEVR, which both do not work either. This is the error I get when I run the code:
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][DBNETLIB]The SQL-Server does not exist or permission has been denied.
Could not open data source.
ODBC Error in SQLDisconnect
(Message translated from Dutch, by the way - this may not be the exact error text in the English version of the software)
When I try simply the IP address as my server connection string, I get a different error that seems to indicate it is able to find the instance (the 2012 one, i.e. the wrong one) but not able to process the query.
[Microsoft][ODBC-stuurprogrammabeheer] Fout in functievolgorde
I'm not sure how to translate this one, but it seems to be related to ODBC-drivers and says "error in function order". Anyway, this error is unrelated and I don't need it solved or explained, it simply goes to show that R does seem to be able to connect to the default instance but not to the newer, named one.
Enable Implied Authentication for Launchpad Accounts
Specifically navigate to the User Account from the Control Panel and you'll see the SQLR UserGroup with 20 accounts.
Permission these on the Server and DB Table with write access.
That should see you right. Good luck
You could create a ODBC connection in your local instance. A tutorial on creating ODBC connections can be found here. Background about the different types of SQL Server ODBC connections can be found here.
The ODBC connection should be able to distinguish between the the different SQL Server instances.
For me the main advantage in using ODBC connections is that I don't have to store database passwords inside/near my R scripts.
In R/Rstudio you can connect to the SQL Server instance via the ODBC channel. A tutorial on ODBC channels and RevoScaleR: link.
Other packages in R also provide possibilities to connect to ODBC connections, for instance: RODBC, dplyr.
I'm working on some issues with psqlODBC's XA/MSDTC transaction handling and I find myself needing to obtain the server connection details (hostname, port, etc) from any user-supplied dsn programmatically without having psqlODBC invoked via the Driver Manager to do so.
Just parsed key/value string pairs will do; the problem is resolving user/system/file DSNs to get the underlying connection info.
The underlying issue I'm trying to solve is that a 32-bit application using MSDTC on a 64-bit system will supply a DSN that works for the 32-bit PostgreSQL driver. The 64-bit PostgreSQL drivers have different names - PostgresSQL ANSI vs PostgreSQL ANSI(x64) and similar for the Unicode drivers. So a DSN that works for a 32-bit app won't work for 64-bit apps ... like msdtc.exe. So I need a way to get the connection parameters the 32-bit app used and feed them into the 64-bit ODBC driver (or direct to libpq).
In the case of a DSN-less connection string like:
DRIVER={{PostgreSQL ANSI}};SERVER=127.0.0.1;PORT=5432;DATABASE=SOMEDB;UID=Administrator;PWD=;CA=disable"
I could just parse it to get the relevant info, but that won't work for file, system, or user DSNs where the XA transaction co-ordinator used by MSDTC only gets whatever the original user app passed to the ODBC layer - like:
DSN=SomeUserOrSystemDSNName
or
FILEDSN=C:\SomeFileDSN.dsn
and wrapped in that DSN is a DRIVER={{{PostgreSQL ANSI}}.
I've taken a look at the ODBC API docs and I don't see anything that seems to expose a way to load any DSN string, resolve file/system/user DSNs and get a parameter hash/map. OTOH, there's a lot of documentation out there, and some of the sections and function names aren't what I'd call predictable.
So - please tell me I'm missing something obvious, and there's a way to just:
GetDSNProperty("FILEDSN=C:\SomeFileDSN.dsn", "SERVER");
.. rather than writing hacky code to manually look up each DSN type.
I was reading a MS Excel help article about pivotcache and wonder what they mean by OLE DB and ODBC sources
...You should use the CommandText
property instead of the SQL property,
which now exists primarily for
compatibility with earlier versions of
Microsoft Excel. If you use both
properties, the CommandText property’s
value takes precedence.
For OLE DB sources, the CommandType
property describes the value of the
CommandText property.
For ODBC sources, the CommandText
property functions exactly like the
SQL property, and setting the property
causes the data to be refreshed...
I really appreciate your short answers.
According to ADO: ActiveX Data Objects, a book by Jason T. Roff, published by O'Reilly Media in 2001 (excellent diagram here), he says precisely what MOZILLA said.
(directly from page 7 of that book)
ODBC provides access only to relational databases
OLE DB provides the following features
Access to data regardless of its format or location
Full access to ODBC data sources and ODBC drivers
So it would seem that OLE DB interacts with SQL-based datasources THRU the ODBC driver layer.
I'm not 100% sure this image is correct. The two connections I'm not certain about are ADO.NET thru ADO C-api, and OLE DB thru ODBC to SQL-based data source (because in this diagram the author doesn't put OLE DB's access thru ODBC, which I believe is a mistake).
ODBC:- Only for relational databases (Sql Server, Oracle etc)
OLE DB:- For both relational and non-relational databases. (Oracle, Sql-Server, Excel, raw files, etc)
Here's my understanding (non-authoritative):
ODBC is a technology-agnostic open standard supported by most software vendors.
OLEDB is a technology-specific Microsoft's API from the COM-era (COM was a component and interoperability technology before .NET)
At some point various datasouce vendors (e.g. Oracle etc.), willing to be compatible with Microsoft data consumers, developed OLEDB providers for their products, but for the most part OLEDB remains a Microsoft-only standard. Now, most Microsoft data sources allow both ODBC and OLEDB access, mainly for compatibility with legacy ODBC data consumers. Also, there exists OLEDB provider (wrapper) for ODBC which allows one to use OLEDB to access ODBC data sources if one so wishes.
In terms of the features OLEDB is substantially richer than ODBC but suffers from one-ring-to-rule-them-all syndrome (overly generic, overcomplicated, non-opinionated).
In non-Microsoft world ODBC-based data providers and clients are widely used and not going anywhere.
Inside Microsoft bubble OLEDB is being phased out in favor of native .NET APIs build on top of whatever the native transport layer for that data source is (e.g. TDS for MS SQL Server).
ODBC and OLE DB are two competing data access technologies. Specifically regarding SQL Server, Microsoft has promoted both of them as their Preferred Future Direction - though at different times.
ODBC
ODBC is an industry-wide standard interface for accessing table-like data. It was primarily developed for databases and presents data in collections of records, each of which is grouped into a collection of fields. Each field has its own data type suitable to the type of data it contains.
Each database vendor (Microsoft, Oracle, Postgres, …) supplies an ODBC driver for their database.
There are also ODBC drivers for objects which, though they are not database tables, are sufficiently similar that accessing data in the same way is useful. Examples are spreadsheets, CSV files and columnar reports.
OLE DB
OLE DB is a Microsoft technology for access to data. Unlike ODBC it encompasses both table-like and non-table-like data such as email messages, web pages, Word documents and file directories. However, it is procedure-oriented rather than object-oriented and is regarded as a rather difficult interface with which to develop access to data sources. To overcome this, ADO was designed to be an object-oriented layer on top of OLE DB and to provide a simpler and higher-level – though still very powerful – way of working with it. ADO’s great advantage it that you can use it to manipulate properties which are specific to a given type of data source, just as easily as you can use it to access those properties which apply to all data source types. You are not restricted to some unsatisfactory lowest common denominator.
While all databases have ODBC drivers, they don’t all have OLE DB drivers. There is however an interface available between OLE and ODBC which can be used if you want to access them in OLE DB-like fashion. This interface is called MSDASQL (Microsoft OLE DB provider for ODBC).
SQL Server Data Access Technologies
Since SQL Server is (1) made by Microsoft, and (2) the Microsoft database platform, both ODBC and OLE DB are a natural fit for it.
ODBC
Since all other database platforms had ODBC interfaces, Microsoft obviously had to provide one for SQL Server. In addition to this, DAO, the original default technology in Microsoft Access, uses ODBC as the standard way of talking to all external data sources. This made an ODBC interface a sine qua non.
The version 6 ODBC driver for SQL Server, released with SQL Server 2000, is still around. Updated versions have been released to handle the new data types, connection technologies, encryption, HA/DR etc. that have appeared with subsequent releases. As of 09/07/2018 the most recent release is v13.1 “ODBC Driver for SQL Server”, released on 23/03/2018.
OLE DB
This is Microsoft’s own technology, which they were promoting strongly from about 2002 – 2005, along with its accompanying ADO layer. They were evidently hoping that it would become the data access technology of choice. (They even made ADO the default method for accessing data in Access 2002/2003.) However, it eventually became apparent that this was not going to happen for a number of reasons, such as:
The world was not going to convert to Microsoft technologies and
away from ODBC;
DAO/ODBC was faster than ADO/OLE DB and was also thoroughly integrated into MS Access, so wasn’t going to die a natural death;
New technologies that were being developed by Microsoft, specifically ADO.NET,
could also talk directly to ODBC. ADO.NET could talk directly to OLE
DB as well (thus leaving ADO in a backwater), but it was not (unlike
ADO) solely dependent on it.
For these reasons and others, Microsoft actually deprecated OLE DB as a data access technology for SQL Server releases after v11 (SQL Server 2012). For a couple of years before this point, they had been producing and updating the SQL Server Native Client, which supported both ODBC and OLE DB technologies. In late 2012 however, they announced that they would be aligning with ODBC for native relational data access in SQL Server, and encouraged everybody else to do the same. They further stated that SQL Server releases after v11/SQL Server 2012 would actively not support OLE DB!
This announcement provoked a storm of protest. People were at a loss to understand why MS was suddenly deprecating a technology that they had spent years getting them to commit to. In addition, SSAS/SSRS and SSIS, which were MS-written applications intimately linked to SQL Server, were wholly or partly dependent on OLE DB. Yet another complaint was that OLE DB had certain desirable features which it seemed impossible to port back to ODBC – after all, OLE DB had many good points.
In October 2017, Microsoft relented and officially un-deprecated OLE DB. They announced the imminent arrival of a new driver (MSOLEDBSQL) which would have the existing feature set of the Native Client 11 and would also introduce multi-subnet failover and TLS 1.2 support. The driver was released in March 2018.
• August, 2011: Microsoft deprecates OLE DB (Microsoft is Aligning with ODBC for Native Relational Data Access)
• October, 2017: Microsoft undeprecates OLE DB (Announcing the new release of OLE DB Driver for SQL Server)
On a very basic level those are just different APIs for the different data sources (i.e. databases). OLE DB is newer and arguably better.
You can read more on both in Wikipedia:
OLE DB
ODBC
I.e. you could connect to the same database using an ODBC driver or OLE DB driver. The difference in the database behaviour in those cases is what your book refers to.
Both are data providers (API that your code will use to talk to a data source). Oledb which was introduced in 1998 was meant to be a replacement for ODBC (introduced in 1992)
I'm not sure of all the details, but my understanding is that OLE DB and ODBC are two APIs that are available for connecting to various types of databases without having to deal with all the implementation specific details of each. According to the Wikipedia article on OLE DB, OLE DB is Microsoft's successor to ODBC, and provides some features that you might not be able to do with ODBC such as accessing spreadsheets as database sources.
At Microsoft website, it shows that native OLEDB provider is applied to SQL server directly and another OLEDB provider called OLEDB Provider for ODBC to access other Database, such as Sysbase, DB2 etc. There are different kinds of component under OLEDB Provider. See Distributed Queries on MSDN for more.
ODBC works only for relational databases, it can't works with non-relational databases such as Ms Excel files. Where Olebd can do everything.
To know why M$ invents OLEDB, you can't compare OLEDB with ODBC. Instead, you should compare OLEDB with DAO,RDO, or ADO. The latter largely relies on SQL. However, OLEDB relies on COM. But ODBC is already there many years, so there's a OLEDB-ODBC bridges to remedy this. I think there's a big picture when M$ invents OLEDB.