Chapter 19. Using PostgreSQL and Microsoft Software over the Network

It's not always the software of just one company that reigns over an IT environment. In many office environments, Unix servers have to be connected to office applications. Some powerful tools, such as Samba, are already available and are widespread in the Open Source community to connect a Unix machine to a Windows network. In most cases, databases are connected with a Windows network by using ODBC or some sort of proprietary software offered by many database vendors , such as Oracle. Another possibility is to use Open Source software, such as Perl's DBI interface.

As a rule of thumb we can say that the more Microsoft is involved the more often ODBC is used for database interaction. Especially when dealing with office applications, ODBC especially plays a major role when you're dealing with office applications. Like we have already in Chapter 9, "Extended PostgreSQL ”Programming Interfaces," PostgreSQL also offers an ODBC interface. In this section, you look closer at this interface and how it can be used in combination with Microsoft Office and Microsoft Visual Basic.

In most cases, using ODBC is a simple task as long as you are not planning to build extremely complex data structures. This chapter gives you an overview of what can go wrong when using ODBC and how to avoid those problems.