odbcConnectionColumns function

odbcConnectionColumns

This function has been deprecated in favor of DBI::dbListFields().

For a given table this function returns detailed information on all fields / columns. The expectation is that this is a relatively thin wrapper around the ODBC SQLColumns function call, with some of the field names renamed / re-ordered according to the return specifications below.

odbcConnectionColumns(conn, name, ..., exact = FALSE)

Arguments

• conn: OdbcConnection
• name: Table identifiers. By default, are interpreted as a ODBC search pattern where _ and % are wild cards. Set exact = TRUE to match _ exactly.
• ...: additional parameters to methods
• exact: Set to TRUE to escape _ in identifier names so that it matches exactly, rather than matching any single character. % always matches any number of characters as this is unlikely to appear in a table name.

Returns

data.frame with columns

• name
• field.type - equivalent to type_name in SQLColumns output
• table_name
• schema_name
• catalog_name
• data_type
• column_size
• buffer_length
• decimal_digits
• numeric_precision_radix
• remarks
• column_default
• sql_data_type
• sql_datetime_subtype
• char_octet_length
• ordinal_position
• nullable

Details

In DBI::dbWriteTable() we make a call to this method to get details on the fields of the table we are writing to. In particular the columns data_type, column_size, and decimal_digits are used. An implementation is not necessary for DBI::dbWriteTable() to work.

odbcConnectionColumns is routed through the SQLColumns ODBC method. This function, together with remaining catalog functions (SQLTables, etc), by default ( SQL_ATTR_METADATA_ID == false ) expect either ordinary arguments (OA) in the case of the catalog, or pattern value arguments (PV) in the case of schema/table name. For these, quoted identifiers do not make sense, so we unquote identifiers prior to the call.

See Also

The ODBC documentation on SQLColumns

for further details.