DataDirect Updates ODBC Drivers
April 21, 2009 Alex Woodie
DataDirect Technologies last week announced a new release of its ODBC driver, which supports all major relational database management systems, including DB2 for IBM i (DB2/400). With version 6 of DataDirect Connect for ODBC, the company has delivered enhancements in the area of application development, performance, bulk loads, and failover. As a subsidiary of database and SOA software developer Progress Software, DataDirect Technologies is tasked with building an array of drivers and adapters that allow customers and partners to move data via ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, XQuery, SOAP, and other standards. With the amount and types of data being stored by companies exploding, driver makers like DataDirect have their hands full in keeping up with all the developments and evolving standards. With DataDirect Connect for ODBC version 6, the company has delivered numerous updates and enhancements aimed at keeping on par with enterprises’ new IT investments and evolving standards. The biggest new feature in version 6 may be support for the open source PostgreSQL and Greenplum databases. PostgreSQL, which is developed and maintained by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, is very popular on Linux, while Greenplum, a commercial open source product developed by the Greenplum company, is known for its scalability for business intelligence and data warehousing workloads. Version 6 also introduces a feature called Bulk Load. DataDirect says this feature is ideal for users who need to perform a variety of bulk data operations, such as loading a database from scratch, or exporting data from one database into another. The feature boost the performance of existing batch operations without the need for application code changes, the company says. Also new in version 6 is Application Failover, a new feature that automatically redirects ODBC requests to an alternate database server if the primary server is unavailable due to a hardware failure or traffic overload. This feature works with or without data replication or clustering technology, and is only available for DB2, Oracle, Sybase, and MySQL databases. rnVersion 6 also gains support for the version of DB2 that ships with IBM i 6.1. This release also offers SSL encryption with client authentication support on all three versions of DB2–DB2 for IBM i (DB2/400), DB2 for z/OS, and DB2 for LUW (Linux, Windows, and Unix). For a full list of features in DataDirect Connect for ODBC 6.0, see the release notes. RELATED STORY DataDirect Supports i 6.1 with .NET Data Provider
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