[R-sig-DB] RODBC connection to Oracle on 64-bit RHEL box failing

[Marc Schwartz]

On Mar 24, 2010, at 9:21 AM, Harlan Harris wrote:

> Marc, thanks very much...
> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 9:44 AM, Marc Schwartz <marc_schwartz using me.com> wrote:
> Is Actual making a 64 bit Oracle ODBC driver available?  I had not seen anything on that and had in fact queried them some time ago specifically on the availability of one. I use their 32 bit version on Snow Leopard.
> 
> Jonathan Monroe at Actual said on 3/5 that they would be releasing it "later next week", which obviously didn't happen. The beta is available at: http://www.actualtechnologies.com/downloads/Actual_Oracle30_rc3_beta.dmg
> 
> It works well enough for the command line unixODBC tools to successfully pull data, anyway.


Interesting. Monroe is the guy that I had communicated with last year on this point. Presumably either they were not yet ready to announce anything and/or it was still on their TODO list.

Can the 64 bit driver co-exist with the 32 bit driver or is it a choice of one or the other? In other words, can I create 32 bit and 64 bit DSN's separately, so that I can use either 32 bit or 64 bit R as I may need interchangeably?


> 
> Two comments:
> 
> 1. The segfault is indeed typically a consequence of a mix of 32/64 bit tools. That being said, I am not seeing anything obvious to suggest that one component or another is 32 bit.  You might want to check your environment variables (eg. LD_LIBRARY_PATH, PATH or one of the Oracle variables) or that there is an entry in /etc/ld.so.conf that is pointing to a 32 bit version of either Oracle's files or unixODBC. Also, be sure that any relevant entries in odbcinst.ini and odbc.ini are also pointing to the proper Oracle ODBC drivers.
> 
> OK, we'll look around for issues there, and will report back if we find anything.


Look forward to anything that you find.

> 
> 
> 2. If you manage to solve the above problem, you have another potential hurdle in front of you, which is that there have been reports of problems connecting to Oracle using 64 bit R/RODBC on 64 bit Linux. It would be helpful, if you do solve the above issue, to try to connect and to see what level of success you have. Prof. Ripley is aware of the issue and either is or will shortly be testing the 64 bit toolchain on Linux to see if he can identify the etiology of the problem and perhaps offer a fix or workaround.
> 
> Yes, I saw the earlier bug report. I'll keep the list updated.
>  
> I have not used ROracle, but others have and seem to have good luck with it. I would not let the last version dates of either unixODBC or ROracle sway your opinion. If the components are pretty stable and are not influenced by updates on the R or Oracle end of things, there may very well be no reason to update them. But I would certainly defer to the respective maintainers on those points.
> 
> I tried to install ROracle, but it failed because "proc" was not installed. I see that it's a separate Oracle software piece, and we will try to install that to see if it helps. 
> 
> It sounds like RODBC is actively being supported, although we're concerned that one person with a day job is the only developer able to work on the Oracle components. (Prof. Ripley is superhuman, admittedly, but there's only one of him!) Is the maintainer of ROracle, David James, on this mailing list?


I would certainly never speak for Prof. Ripley, but I can tell you that during my 8+ years of using R, whether it be via onlist postings or my periodic offlist communications with him, I have never had a reason to doubt his availability or responsiveness when it comes to anything R related, whether that be 'base R' as a member of R Core, or the other packages that he maintains. That experience includes both day and night for any given time zone...

I checked the archives and at least recently, don't see a post here from David after late 2008, but I would not hesitate to send him an e-mail directly, which appears to be daj025 using gmail.com or dj using bell-labs.com.


Marc


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