[DOCS-12037] [BIC] Document Create a DSN Procedure for Linux Created: 06/Sep/18  Updated: 29/Oct/23  Resolved: 30/Oct/18

Status: Closed
Project: Documentation
Component/s: BI Connector
Affects Version/s: None
Fix Version/s: None

Type: Task Priority: Major - P3
Reporter: Jonathan DeStefano Assignee: Steve Renaker (Inactive)
Resolution: Fixed Votes: 0
Labels: triage
Remaining Estimate: Not Specified
Time Spent: Not Specified
Original Estimate: Not Specified

Participants:
Days since reply: 5 years, 20 weeks, 5 days ago

 Description   

Description

The MongoDB ODBC Driver was released for Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04 and RHEL 7 in v1.1.0. We should help readers configure a DSN using it.

Scope of changes

Impact to Other Docs

MVP (Work and Date)

Resources (Scope or Design Docs, Invision, etc.)



 Comments   
Comment by Steve Renaker (Inactive) [ 21/Sep/18 ]

I've spent some time with various approaches to testing an ODBC connection in Linux, with no luck so far. All the stuff I've found online is either platform- or application-specific in unfeasible ways, or else the procedures have been too dense and poorly-documented for me to figure out. 

Comment by Jonathan DeStefano [ 21/Sep/18 ]

seth.payne suggests connecting via command line. Seth will follow up with some recommendations. Search "test ODBC using command line" and try some of those suggestions.

Comment by Steve Renaker (Inactive) [ 20/Sep/18 ]

I poked around with LibreOffice Calc, but I couldn't figure out any way to add an ODBC connection. There's some online documentation regarding Calc and ODBC, but it all seemed to be for some other version of Calc than the one I have; it refers to menu items not present in my version.

I also downloaded and installed something called Jaspersoft Studio, which claims to run on Linux and use ODBC, but I couldn't figure out any way to make it work.

At any rate, the procedure for creating a DSN on Linux is pretty minimal. There's nothing to install with the ODBC driver, just a couple of .so files which you can download and put in /usr/lib/odbc, or elsewhere if you like. There are a few third-party ODBC manager tools for Linux, but I'm not sure which, if any, of them are in widespread use - most of the existing online documentation just instructs users to create a file called odbc.ini and customize it for use with a particular ODBC driver.

The point here is, if we want to have instructions on creating a DSN in Linux, I think it will suffice to show a link to the MongoDB ODBC driver download page and explain that you need to create an odbc.ini file, and leave the rest up to the users to figure out. For now at least, I'm going to proceed with that. If anyone can point me to a Linux application I can use to test the odbc.ini file I've created, I'll be happy to test against that.

Comment by Jonathan DeStefano [ 19/Sep/18 ]

Steve, I remember hearing some chatter on #bi-connector about LibreOffice's spreadsheet tool. Maybe give that a shot and report back?

Comment by Steve Renaker (Inactive) [ 19/Sep/18 ]

I've got a working Linux environment with MongoDB / BI Connector / ODBC driver all installed, and I've created what I think is a valid DSN with an odbc.ini file, but I don't know if it's actually working or not because I haven't been able to find a BI tool to try to connect to. Does anyone know of an ODBC-capable BI tool which runs on Linux? 

Generated at Thu Feb 08 08:04:14 UTC 2024 using Jira 9.7.1#970001-sha1:2222b88b221c4928ef0de3161136cc90c8356a66.