Hi,

Like many here, I am fairly new to PostgreSQL having been forced to cut my teeth on Microsoft SQLServer. My apologies if this is the wrong forum for this question, please advise if so!

We use a third party application to manage our student population. Part of the reason we purchased it is that it allegedly will run against "Any ODBC-Compliant back-end database". As I mentioned above, for various reasons we used the Microsoft product, but now want to move away and PostgreSQL on Linux is the obvious choice.

My problem is that the app won't initialise against PostgreSQL. I have contacted the vendor who simply says they don't support PostgreSQL. They only support M£ SQLServer, MicrosoftAccess, Oracle and Ingres. No help from them!

I suspect the issue is with data types. I have already created a domain to map DATETIME to TIMESTAMP but I haven't got much further. Unfortunately, with nearly 700 tables, scanning them all isn't an option!

I have two possible solutions which I'd like advice on (which is better and/ or how to do each).

1) If there is a log somewhere showing failed requests, I might be able to see what the application is trying to do and then figure out a way around it.

2) Is there a way I can configure PostgreSQL (probably temporarily!) to just look like Microsoft or one of the other supported systems?

I should mention that I am in the process of developing a new Web-Based front end to the database with the long-term aim of ditching the current application.

Any help would be most gratefully received.

Many thanks,

Paul Simpson




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On Tuesday 24 February 2004 16:51, Paul Simpson wrote:
You can log in every query server is executing. You need to enable the
corresponding log statement in pg_hba.conf. I think it is called
log_statement.

And of course, don't throw away server logs. If they are redirected
to /dev/null, they are useless anyways..

I am sure you will find lot of information in there..

HTH

Shridhar

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Thanks for that! I'll have a look...

Paul

You can log in every query server is executing. You need to enable the
corresponding log statement in pg_hba.conf. I think it is called
log_statement.

And of course, don't throw away server logs. If they are redirected
to /dev/null, they are useless anyways..

I am sure you will find lot of information in there..

HTH

Shridhar





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Ok, I've done that and it would appear to be a table naming issue...

When I look at the logfile at the point where a table is creates, I get thefollowing lines (for each table, as far as I can tell, although the third line only appears for some):-

select relname, nspname, relkind from pg_catalog.pg_class, pg_catalog.pg_namespace where relkind in ('r', 'v')and nspname like 'public' and relname like 'TTATTASSOC' and relname !~ '^pg_|^dd_' and pg_namespace.oid = relnamespace order by nspname, relname

Create Table TTATTASSOC (AssocId varchar(10), SetId varchar(10), SlotId int4)

select u.nspname, c.relname, a.attname, a.atttypid, t.typname, a.attnum, a.attlen, a.atttypmod, a.attnotnull,c.relhasrules, c.relkind from pg_catalog.pg_namespace u, pg_catalog.pg_class c, pg_catalog.pg_attribute a, pg_catalog.pg_type t where u.oid = c.relnamespace and (not a.attisdropped) and c.oid= a.attrelid and a.atttypid = t.oid and (a.attnum > 0) and c.relname = 'TTATTASSOC' and u.nspname = 'public' order by u.nspname, c.relname, attnum

select relname, nspname, relkind from pg_catalog.pg_class, pg_catalog.pg_namespace where relkind in ('r', 'v') and nspname like 'public' and relname like 'TTATTASSOC' and relname !~ '^pg_|^dd_' and pg_namespace.oid = relnamespace order by nspname, relname


If I am correct (comments please) then I assume it is looking for the existence of the table, when it doesn't find it, it is creating it. I'm not entirely sure what the third line does, but the fourth seems to be checking again for the table's existence.

I have run the statements manually and they all seem to work, however the first (and fourth) always return zero rows. If I replace the table name witha lower case version, then I get one row returned.

I have, therefore, come to the conclusion that the app requires table namesin Upper case. How can I force this to work?

Sorry for the long question...!

Paul


You can log in every query server is executing. You need to enable the
corresponding log statement in pg_hba.conf. I think it is called
log_statement.

And of course, don't throw away server logs. If they are redirected
to /dev/null, they are useless anyways..

I am sure you will find lot of information in there..

HTH

Shridhar





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On Tuesday 24 February 2004 22:10, Paul Simpson wrote:
I believe postgresql is noisy about the case in tablename. In the create table
statement above if you want to preserve the case in tablename, you have to
quote it.

Try it and let us know. (This is out of memory so might need further tuning)

Now how to force you app. to do that remains altogether different question..

Shridhar

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Thank you for the advice, unfortunately, that isn't an option, you see I didn't write the application and so cannot control the calls it makes. What Ineed is for PG to do as it's told!

I can only think of three solutions which I'd appreciate comments / advice on....

1) Hack PG Source and re-compile to make upper-case the default table name.
2) Hack the ODBC driver source to get it to always add quotes to table names.
3) Given that the statement seems to be looking for the table name in one of the system tables, put a trigger on that table to automatically convert any new additions to upper case.

Of the three, I suspect #3 would be the easiest, but would I screw up anything else? If anyone suggests #1 or #2 as the "best" alternative, then could they offer advice on how to proceed? (Actually advice on #3 would be welcome too....!)

As an aside, it would seem that from searching the web, this is a common problem. The "quote the names" solution just doesn't work for a lot of people.. I would suggest that if PG is to be seen as a realistic migration path from other DB's, this really needs to be fixed by the developers.

Anyway, thanks again for the help so far - hopefully not much further to go!

Paul

I believe postgresql is noisy about the case in tablename. In the create table
statement above if you want to preserve the case in tablename, you have to
quote it.

Try it and let us know. (This is out of memory so might need further tuning)

Now how to force you app. to do that remains altogether different question..

Shridhar





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Having spent a lot of time searching on the 'net, I suspect this would be avery popular option for a lot of people. What are the chances of getting this done fairly quickly, do you think?

Paul




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Just a couple of notes:

Make sure that you are using the latest available
version of the ODBC driver. You can get the latest
snapshot of the .dll from Hiroshi's page:

http://www.geocities.jp/inocchichichi/psqlodbc/

There was discussion of, and agreement in principle
to, a user setting "foldtoupper", which would take
care of your problem, and all similar ones. But
apparently that has not been picked up by anyone. See
the following:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...s.postgresql.*

I am thinking that providing this option would be
important if we want to encourage more people to port
their apps from other RDBMS's. But I am not
comptetent to contribute to that, so this is all I
will say about it.


--- Paul Simpson <Paul.Simpson (AT) spgs (DOT) org> wrote:

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"Paul Simpson" <Paul.Simpson (AT) spgs (DOT) org> writes:
If that were a simple change, somebody would have done it before you.
(Hint: the problem is not in changing a few lines in the lexer, it's in
fixing everything else that will break.)

What might be easier is to hack the ODBC driver so that those
system-catalog queries it issues are case-insensitive --- for instance,
use "ilike" in place of "like". I am not certain that would fix your
problem completely, but it'd be worth trying.

regards, tom lane

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I have downloaded it, thanks.

I'm not sure about this "foldtoupper" idea (particularly as they are also talking about leaving the tablenames alone in the system tables.

What I don't understand is why the system can't be told simply to be case sensitive. That way, if a table is created as MyTaBlE then it is called MyTaBlE without requiring quotes, or am I missing something here?

Paul


Make sure that you are using the latest available
version of the ODBC driver. You can get the latest
snapshot of the .dll from Hiroshi's page:

http://www.geocities.jp/inocchichichi/psqlodbc/

There was discussion of, and agreement in principle
to, a user setting "foldtoupper", which would take
care of your problem, and all similar ones. But
apparently that has not been picked up by anyone. See
the following:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...s.postgresql.*

I am thinking that providing this option would be
important if we want to encourage more people to port
their apps from other RDBMS's. But I am not
comptetent to contribute to that, so this is all I
will say about it.


--- Paul Simpson <Paul.Simpson (AT) spgs (DOT) org> wrote:

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want.
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