UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

As a newcomer to UNIX I need to know if there are .txt and .csx ODBC drivers available. I want to import some data and the UNIX tech which I am in contact with does not know much about UNIX!

He asked me to find out if these drivers existed or use a 'LOAD DATA INFILE' command, which is not too familiar to me since my background in databases is windows and Sybase SQL - which Mysql is based on, right?

I don't want to load the data right away, rather check for correct column orders, types, etc and then import at a later time.

UNIX, php and Mysql are very tough to get to work and take a lot of extra time. I could have done this in 2 seconds on a windows box.

Don't get me wrong, I hate anything Microsoft, but at least iHTML (which I use) is a lot better than PHP - no doubt in my mind AND Sybase is much more intuitive than MySQL - so I have to assume that UNIX is a lot more of a pain than Windows.

Any ideas about my import concern?
Pleas email me ::email removed:: since I very rarely go tho this site.

Thanks,
Noodles

We always hate the things we are unfamilar with

Anyway, I don't know what your "unix tech" was talking
about with regard to text, ODBC drivers but if you have a "csv"
file, you can load it into MySQL assuming your table
data types are compatable, from the mysql prompt (if
I remember correctly)...

You can enter the file to be loaded with the full path, i.e.
LOAD DATA INFILE "/tmp/file.csv" INTO TABLE newtable;

This is how the text file should be formatted if you use mysql defaults (quoting the manual);
"If you don't specify a FIELDS clause, the defaults are the same as if you had written this:

FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t' ENCLOSED BY '' ESCAPED BY '\\'

If you don't specify a LINES clause, the default is the same as if you had written this:

LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'"

Again, I would recommend becomming familiar with MySQL.
It is NOT based on Sybase. Check out the docs. at...
http://www.mysql.com/documentation/index.html

Thanks for your response, but I wanted to know how to read the .csv file, basically print it to the screen, verify the column orders and data and then do an import at some other time.

This LOAD function is only for importing into the database. I need something similar to Windows where a text/csv ODBC driver has been installed and I use it as my DSN to run my SQL query.


Now a bit of promotion to pass along:

As I become more familiar with PHP and MySQL I am finding the shortcomings in each. iHTML is a much more intuitive and more powerful scripting language. We have it installed on our UNIX server and it is something everyone should consider as an alternative.

The same goes w/ MySQL, which is a junior version of Sybase (as is Microsoft's SQL as well). I'm very concerned what will happen when our database gets very big. Will this sql be as reliable as Sybase? I hope so!

Sure PHP and MySQl are free, but you get what you pay for.

Noodles

You may want to take a look at unixODBC...
http://www.unixodbc.org/

...has lots of certified drivers for different flavors of UNIX.

You may also want to look at MyODBC...
http://www.mysql.com/downloads/api-myodbc.html

Programs known to work with it are...
Access, Excel and Word among others.

Again, I suggest reading the documentation first.

I may be way off, but you don't need a driver just to read a csv (tsv, *sv) file into data structures.
Use awk, sh, perl.... etc.
For example, each night we produce a very large comma-delimited file each night for importation into a legacy application.
This will check if the file is 120 columns wide. If not, it will identify which row produced the error, and if so, will give us the output of column 52 along with the record identifier, which we can use for reporting purposes:

Code:

BEGIN { FS = "," }
{
   if (NF != 120)
      printf("Bad: %s\n",$1)
   else
      printf("%s %s\n",$1, $52)
}

If it's OK, it's imported into a legacy database.

And I don't know where you are coming up with the information that MySql is derived from SyBase in any way... That would be like saying that Oracle was built on db2.
Please check your sources, as you may have been misinformed.

Like was said above in another post, we are afraid of (and do not understand the full feature-set of) any product that we are not familiar with. I suggest that if you're really going to use these tool, learn them fully before poo-pooing them.