[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk vs. system user accounts

[Steven Critchfield]

On Wed, 2003-06-25 at 10:16, duncan wrote:
> >ODBC == BAD
> >ODBC is the lowest common denominator for database connections. In this
> >case a full blown database is overkill for lookups mainly. You don't
> >need the whole SQL stuff. This is why LDAP would be okay, it essentially
> >is a flat file that can be searched fast and remotely.
> 
> i think ODBC support would be very useful, exactly because it is the lowest 
> common denominator.  fairly recently i had to work with an IVR company who 
> wouldnt insert values into a database hosted at my location because their 
> application did not support ODBC - instead they offered to FTP individual 
> text files to an FTP server where I had to process them and insert them 
> into a database myself.  needless to say that company isnt getting any 
> business from me anytime in the near future.
> 
> ODBC is widely used and supported because its simple to use/support and 
> very widely supported.  ok technically its not a very elegant solution - 
> but as a business solution it is very powerful.

It also isn't very secure by default, and is very expensive relative to
native support for connections and teardowns. I completely understand
why your vendor didn't want to ship you data directly to a database. You
probably shouldn't have asked for it either. Your vendor probably needed
a reliable way to ensue what they sent you made it to the other side.
They also probably wanted to do a batch drop to reduce system load. It
definitely kept them out of your schema. I recently had to fight a 2
year battle to convert tools to use a generic interface so I could have
control over my schema back. Previous developers had decided a extremely
tight coupling of the remote applications and the database was a good
thing. For me it meant simultaneous updates to many systems when the
schema changed and I couldn't be afforded down time to do it. 

BTW, LDAP supports multiple database backends. LDAP probably is less
costly to setup and teardown interaction. LDAP can maintain persistent
connections to the databases you store the data in, and talk to them in
the native format. There is no need for the added headache of ODBC for
simple lookups.


-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>