After scouring the internet to find a step by step process, I've exhausted my efforts. Although I have learned a lot which brings me to this forum. I'm totally new and hope to ask the right questions.
What is the easiest way to connect to a SQL server from aix?
Researching out there, it seems that there are a couple of options:
Data Direct driver
FreeTDS
unixODBC
I hope someone here in the community can either point me in the right direction or share with me some resources and even a step by step if they have one
What am I'm trying to do?
Where I work, we use aix as our main os. We also have a SQL server that houses a lot of our data.
All I want to do is create an aix query that will allow me to connect to a SQL server. From that connection, I want to create an ODBC connect that will allow me to read a dbo table and then create a file with my criteria.
How can you help?
High level view of the sequence of steps I need to take to install a driver on aix and probably something on the SQL server side that will allow me to connect to a SQL server. What driver should I use to connect the two?
Counter question: what is the easiest way to write programs?
It depends. It depends on a lot of things and without further describing what you are trying to do and how you are planning to do it it is difficult to answer your question.
OK, this is at least some of the info talked about above, even though i wonder why a company would use AIX as its main OS and then put the database on Windows. It usually is the other way round as AIX is a lot better suited to robust and continuous operation than some Windoze.
Anyway, what you most probably need is unixODBC. It is a driver you install (in fact it is basically a shared library containing the functions used to access the DB) and then have to configure to access the DB.
Drivers to install are "packages" and each OS has its package-manager. AIX has in fact two of them: the native installp and then rpm . This means you can install packages in "bff-format" (installp) and rpm-format (rpm), but they still have to be built for the respective platform you are going to install to. You cannot take any Linux-package in rpm-format, install it and then expect it to work. You still need a package specifically designed and built for AIX. A great source for (open-source) packages is Mister Perzls AIX rpm-page, where you can find and download (among others) recent versions of unixODBC.
There is still not enough information to tell you how to configure the package once you have installed it, but i suggest you install first and - if you still need help configuring it - report back.