Re: [U2] ODBC - Not finding the MV fields.

I tend to agree with Bill with a similar approach of using a second ODBC compliant dictionary.    If you've tried running HS.UPDATE.FILEINFO on dictionaries with complex I-descriptors, you find out that it churns forever and doesn't come back.

To limit the ODBC visibility to what we need, we have about 5 live universe accounts so we created 5 new ODBC shell accounts that are named with _ODBC added as a suffix.   Each of these accounts has the usual ODBC file called HS_FILE_INFO file in them.

To eliminate all the overhead in maintaining this this dual dictionary scheme, we added another field to our main dictionary editor so that we can flag specific fields that are 'ODBC ready' from a consumption point of view.   Only certain files and fields that have been sanitized are flagged for ODBC.

If we have changed any ODBC flags on a field, when we exit the dictionary editor process, a phantom is launched that logs into each of our xxx_ODBC accounts and runs a refresh.

To save processing time, we also have a small table of filenames that tell these programs which files can have ODBC fields in them.
 
As part of this refresh, any new files that have ODBC fields are automatically created with an empty dictionary and no data section.  The F file pointer (line 2) is updated to point to the live 'data' portion of the files in our real data accounts.

A few other steps such as building the ODBC @ items are done such as @SELECT, @, @EMPTY.NULL, @ASSOC_KEY.xxx.

We also automatically update HS_FILE_INFO with 'READ' for read only, run a COMPILE.DICT and finally run HS.UPDATE.FILEINFO before logging to the next account and running the same process.

So our xxx_ODBC accounts have only a few files in them with these ODBC limited dictionaries that are automatically refreshed when changes are made. Using this, we've been able to completely automate all of the ODBC maintenance overhead once we've set up the initial paired and empty xxx_ODBC accounts in Universe. When a new field is requested it only takes a few moments to flag the field and subsequently test with MS access.
 
-Troy

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bill Brutzman
Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 12:32 PM
To: 'U2 Users List'
Subject: Re: [U2] ODBC - Not finding the MV fields.

Chris:

1. The legacy dictionaries here tend to have overhead not needed by ODBC.
2. Only after experiencing some difficult ODBC problems here... and trying to simplify the problem...  did I realize that some traditional DICT characteristics are problematic to ODBC.
3. While having two dictionaries for the same data is not my first choice...
4. When it works... it is a beautiful thing.

--Bill

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