ODBC FM Driver for Linux

[Micah G]

Does anyone know of one that exists?

[Fitch]

FileMaker doesn't run on Linux, so could you clarify what you want to do?

[Micah G]

ODBC is a way of connecting to a database not running on your system. I want to connect to FM on Mac OS X Tiger from my Linux webserver.

[Fitch]

I know what ODBC is, thanks. You say "connect to FM." You may already know that you can't use FMP for that (except on same machine which can't apply here), only FMSA.

AFAIK, the ODBC/JDBC drivers are only available as installers for Mac and Windows.

Further info: Help menu > Product Documentation > ODBC and JDBC Guide.

[Micah G]

As the original post states, we have FM9 Server Advanced. I know what comes on the CD. I'm wondering if anyone knows of a third party that supplies a driver for Linux.

[kmcb]

Micah G,

I was wonder if you have made any process on ODBC driver for linux. I'm interested in the same thing for an application.

KMCB

[lannon]

Micah,

Could you clarify what you're trying to do?

If you want your Filemaker Server (running on OSX) to be able to communicate with your MySQL server (running on Linux), you'll need the ODBC drivers for OSX from Actual Technologies.

If you want to be able to communicate with your Filemaker Server from your Linux box, you should not need any additional drivers (assuming you do have Filemaker Server Advanced).

ODBC functions as a standard interface providing SQL-like functionality. So, on your Linux box, any SQL client will be able to communicate with FMSA 9 via the built-in ODBC interface.

I'm not exactly sure what it is you're trying to do, but if you'd just like to access your FMSA data from a Linux machine, it should be trivial. Any SQL client will work. If you are hoping to somehow synchronize your MySQL data with your FMSA data (from the Linux side), you are more likely going to need an additional layer of software, like SyncDek or some other synchronization layer.

Hope that helps.

John

[Micah G]

Micah,

Could you clarify what you're trying to do?

If you want your Filemaker Server (running on OSX) to be able to communicate with your MySQL server (running on Linux), you'll need the ODBC drivers for OSX from Actual Technologies.

This is very true and we're looking into that.

If you want to be able to communicate with your Filemaker Server from your Linux box, you should not need any additional drivers (assuming you do have Filemaker Server Advanced).

ODBC functions as a standard interface providing SQL-like functionality. So, on your Linux box, any SQL client will be able to communicate with FMSA 9 via the built-in ODBC interface.

I'm not exactly sure what it is you're trying to do, but if you'd just like to access your FMSA data from a Linux machine, it should be trivial. Any SQL client will work. If you are hoping to somehow synchronize your MySQL data with your FMSA data (from the Linux side), you are more likely going to need an additional layer of software, like SyncDek or some other synchronization layer.

Hope that helps.

John

This however is problematic. While ODBC is a conduit for talking to Filemaker, and implements a similar interface, each program has it's own ODBC driver which facilitates communication. The problem with ODBC is that each DB engine implements it differently, so every vendor needs to supply a driver. Filemaker supplies an ODBC driver for Windows and OS X, but there is not one for Linux.

If you have implemented this on Linux and know how to do it without the driver, I would very much like to know.

Thanks,

Micah

[lannon]

This however is problematic. While ODBC is a conduit for talking to Filemaker, and implements a similar interface, each program has it's own ODBC driver which facilitates communication. The problem with ODBC is that each DB engine implements it differently, so every vendor needs to supply a driver. Filemaker supplies an ODBC driver for Windows and OS X, but there is not one for Linux.

If you have implemented this on Linux and know how to do it without the driver, I would very much like to know.

Thanks,

Micah

Micah,

I apologize, I had not fully understood what you were trying to accomplish in my last post. As it is, I'm fairly certain that you're correct, AFAIK, there are no ODBC client drivers for Linux. However, although FMI makes no mention of it, The DataDirect SequeLink for JDBC 5.5 client drivers are pure Java. The DataDirect web site includes instructions for installation in *nix environments. So, it stands to reason that you may be able to use JDBC to connect to your FMS data source from Linux.

Furthermore, you could check out http://code.google.com/p/filemaker-to-servoy-jdbc-driver/

A project seeking to provide free JDBC driver to allow communication Filemaker access to Servoy. This is a pure Java implementation, so you should be able to make it work. The source is freely available in their google code subversion repository. Their implementation uses Filemaker's XML interface.

Using the XML interface, you could always roll your own middleware that sits between your web server and your Filemaker server.

It doesn't appear that FMI "supports" any kind of *nix solutions to the Filemaker connectivity problem, but I believe there are workarounds.

Regards,

John

[Eric PilotWare]

lannon Said: "I apologize, I had not fully understood what you were trying to accomplish in my last post. As it is, I'm fairly certain that you're correct, AFAIK, there are no ODBC client drivers for Linux. However, although FMI makes no mention of it, The DataDirect SequeLink for JDBC 5.5 client drivers are pure Java. The DataDirect web site includes instructions for installation in *nix environments. So, it stands to reason that you may be able to use JDBC to connect to your FMS data source from Linux."

--

--

You are correct, I just got this working today. I just installed the DataDirect SequeLink for JDBC 5.5 client drivers on my SUSE linux host. From there you can use a java applet to communicate.

The testforjdbc supplied app works out of the box. I actually ended up using DBD::JDBC because I'm using Perl to communicate to FileMaker. Basically, Perl talks to a Java app "Apache log4j", log4j uses the Java driver to communicate to FileMaker Server via ODBC. It's pretty cool. Email me if you have questions.

Eric