MySQL Bugs: #46497: SQL Administrator scheduled backups ODBC

Bug #46497	SQL Administrator scheduled backups ODBC
Submitted:	31 Jul 2009 14:29	Modified:	3 Aug 2009 8:01
Reporter:	Nick Preuss	Email Updates:
Status:	Not a Bug	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Administrator	Severity:	S3 (Non-critical)
Version:		OS:	Windows
Assigned to:		CPU Architecture:	Any
Tags:	administrator tool, fail, mysql administrator, ODBC, scheduled backup, windows

Description:
The MySQL tools that include MySQL Administrator do not include MySQL ODBC drivers. The toolkit installer should include a check for the ODBC drivers and install if necessary. Several bugs have been reported in the forums that scheduled backups won't run but manual ones will. Error ID 1 appears in event viewer with no information related to the problem.

How to repeat:
Take a new windows installation.
Install WAMP
Install SQL Administrator Tool.
Create a scheduled backup and watch it fail.

MySQL ODBC drivers must be installed and a new connection created then re-save the backup project to correct the issue.

Suggested fix:
The problem would be solved by implementing a check for ODBC drivers during the installation of the MySQL Administrator tool installing the drivers if necessary.

Thank you for the bug report. Could you please elaborate why the ODBC MySQL driver is related to the scheduled backup?. Thanks in advance.

Miguel, 
When the scheduled backup task runs it relies on an ODBC - System DSN to make the connection to the MySQL server. Without the MySQL ODBC drivers installed (which aren't included with the MySQL toolkit or WAMP installers)when you setup the connection parameters using MySQL administrator GUI it is unable to create that ODBC DSN for lack of the driver.

No error message is displayed during the connection setup and using the MySQL Admin GUI it will still make connection to the DB's using an alternate method and you can perform manual backups just not scheduled ones due to the scheduled tasks relying on an ODBC system DSN.

If you run a scheduled backup without the ODBC setup it attempts to run and times out unable to make a connection to the DBs. You get a generic message in the MySQL lgofile that isn't very helpful and the Windows event viewer displays a generic Event ID:1 error message with no further information for lack of an entry in the associated DLL file.

Once the ODBC drivers are installed to the system you have to create a new connection using the Admin GUI because it only attempts to setup that ODBC connection when the connection parameters are setup the 1st time using the Admin GUI.

After that everything in the Admin tools seems to work correctly.

Screenshots of ODBC created by Admin GUI

Attachment: ODBC_screens.docx (application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document, text), 36.57 KiB.

If you are using a 'bundled' WAMP distribution (like XAMPP) and experience this problem I think you should complain to them (XAMPP distributors) and not to MySQL!

Is this reproducable with offical MySQL server downloads from:
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/ ??

I do not know internals of MA (and only use it for configuring services and not for backup where I use SQLyog scheduled backup or a CRON'ed mysqldump job).  But MA connects to MySQL with the C-API and not ODBC to my best knowledge.

Peter
(Not a MySQL person)

Peter,
What happened to your OpenSource community spirit?

I have a working installation but I did experience some frustration in getting the Admin tool to work properly. Frustration that others should not have to repeat if my experience is documented and even less frustration if a simple fix is implemented in future distributions.

That is the fundamental idea beyond the concept of "OpenSource" is it not?

I do agree that the bundled WAMP distribution should contain the same fix I have suggested here. However I haven't run into an issue related to ODBC with the WAMP installation I used but I did hit an issue with MA. To me the most appropriate place to recommend fix would be here, don't you agree?
-Nick-

@Nick .. you have not at all provided any usefull information why you think that ODBC is a requirement.  To my best knowledge is is not.  If it is with some 'bundled' WAMP package it is a problem with that package (but I also doubt that).

Many thanks for writing a bug report.

MySQL Administrator is using native driver to connect to the database. No ODBC is needed here at all.

So there is no need for us to overload packages by adding ODBC driver here. Also it always depends which ODBC driver you need. We offer several different ODBC drivers for different usage. We are not able to guess if user needs MyODBC 3 or MyODBC 5.