[CentOS] Re: SSH, SCP connections to remote MySQL Database using OpenOffice Possible?

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 22:24 -0400, Jim Perrin wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 11:51 AM, Therese Trudeau <mswotr at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >  Now why didn't I think of that?!?  I will and if I find a solution I'll post it on this thread thanks.
> 
> I'm ignoring the OT bits of this because for some reason this made me
> curious. Here are the findings. It *is* possible to do this with the
> OOo Calc in centos, but it takes a bit of muscle to get working.
> 
> The default ODBC drivers from the unixODBC package don't work. Period.
> 
> The jdbc driver will work, however it doesn't come by default, and
> seems to require Sun java (easiest by installing the jdk rpm from
> java.sun.com, then installing the sun-compat-java package from
> jpackage.org)
> 
> You can get the  mysql-connector-java-5.0.8-1jpp package from
> jpackage.org, and this is the easy part. This package requires log4j,
> which is in the centos base repo so you'll need to install this as
> well. You'll also need jta, which unfortunately is non-free, and only
> available as an srpm from jpackage ( in the 1.6 non-free tree. I
> haven't seen it appear yet in 1.7).
> 
> This next bit assumes some minimal familiarity with building rpms.
> You'll have to change the cvs_version string from 1_0_1_B to 1_1 in
> the jta spec file, and download the jta class package from
> http://java.sun.com/products/jta/
> 
> I didn't bother to fix the documentation related portion of the spec,
> but rather cheated and built the rpm with '--without javadoc'
> 
> After you have sun java, jta, log4j, and the mysql-connector-java
> package installed, log out & log in again. This should put the sun
> java bits into your openoffice discovered path. We'll see here in a
> minute anyway.
> 
> Open up OOo calc, and go to Tools, then Options. Select the java menu
> item on the left.
> Make sure the sun java package appears in the list. Make sure the box
> at the top for 'use java' is checked, and make sure sun java is
> selected. Then choose 'Class Path', then 'Add archive'. Add the path
> '/usr/share/java/mysql-connector-java.jar'
> 
> Now save and exit. It'll tell you that you have to restart OOo Calc,
> and that's BS. You actually have to log out and log back in again for
> some insane reason I have yet to discover. This time around you should
> actually be able to connect to your database by selecting MySQL from
> the list, and jdbc as the connection type. This works with and without
> the ssh tunnel in testing here.
----
for the record...I used the default OODBC drivers for postgres on both
CentOS 4 and now Cent OS 5 but the postgres db I use is localhost. I
mostly use the ODBC drivers from my Fedora desktop (not localhost
obviously) and they work fine.

so when you state "The default ODBC drivers from the unixODBC package
don't work. Period." I have to say that in my limited experience, they
do indeed work with postgres. I don't generally use MySQL for anything
other than special purpose stuff (horde/sqlgrey) and have little
interest in reporting from them.

Craig