[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk community input: FreeTDS (cdr_tds.c)or unixODBC (cdr_unixodbc.c) ?

[Steven Critchfield]

On Fri, 2003-08-01 at 10:56, Erik Anderson wrote:
> > Something that may need to be thought out, we seem to run into this
> > database interface problem regularly enough. Is it time that the
> > database access get moved to a resource and then the extensions
> > app_sql_postgres.c could be made into just a sql app that works with any
> > backend database. Also the CDR stuff could use the same interface to
> > write out it's logs. Of course the biggest problem I see is that there
> > isn't a fully set up perl DBI/DBD drivers for C yet. The libdbi library
> > is still short a few critical drivers for what has been mentioned here,
> > specifically CSV and MS SQL.
> 
> Sorry [Steven Critchfield].  Are you saying to use libdbi versus unixODBC?
> I do not understand what your recommendation/suggestion is.

I was actually saying in the last line quoted above that libdbi fell
short of what we needed.

> unixODBC is probably just 1 means to an ends so multiple Databases can be
> used for CDR records.

The benefits of something like libdbi is that it tries to use the native
drivers first. You should be able to select a ODBC driver if no native
driver exists. Native drivers should always be faster than an ODBC
driver.

My main point is that if we could consolidate all database activity into
a centralized resource then all other parts of asterisk that people wish
to have database support could then go to that resource and not worry
about the underlying database. 

I think someone here mentioned having a mysql extension lookup module
already working, this could then be modified to work with the resource
and work on any supported database. Same with the CDR stuff. In general
you should then be able to just drop a small amount of config for a
module in a [general] section the defined the method of access and any
pertinent authentication details and be done.

I just wish something like perls DBI/DBD was available in native C and
was as feature complete as perls implementation.
-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>