ODBC and SQL string length

Group,

Using MS Excel V5.0, Visionware ODBC's Drivers (SQL_Retriever), and Oracle V7.0 on SunOS 4.1.3, I am beginning to notice that the SQL string that I pass to the ODBC call level interface to issue a query to the remote data is limited to 255 characters.

I am using Excel's VBA and the ODBC addin to get to the ODBC drivers for which I am interested in.

Do others out there who are using ODBC also have the same limitation of the string length of the SQL statement/query that you are passing off to your ODBC driver (i.e. MS-Access using ODBC, Visual Basic using ODBC, Native Oracle ODBC Drivers)? To put it directly, is this limitation a limitation based on the ODBC specification? is this limitation driver specific (see it in the Visionware Driver only)?

It seems strange to me to think that someone(s) out there believed that 255 character is plenty to specify a query to any database/database application in the world as a general solution to the world's distributed database computing problems! Am I the only one how believe's this? Should I be forced to create 2 character table names and 2 character column names so that I can stay within the 255 characters necessary to specify a fairly verbose query?

Scott Hissam
Unisys Corporation
hissam_at_source.asset.com Received on Thu May 26 1994 - 04:42:16 CEST