Hi Martin,
my name's Daragh, and I'm a renewal projects architect in the
University of Chicago. I saw your name on a listserv - openssh-unix-dev. I
was hoping you could lend some insight to a problem we're trying to solve.
We are trying to find a way for an Oracle database to connect
securely to a mainframe (OS/390 running Model204 DB) through ODBC (Open
Database Connection protocol), which is session-based.
The vendor that is providing the ODBC listener on the Mainframe side
says they can provide SSL encryption as an alternative, but there are no
SSL-enabled ODBC drivers on the distributed side that we can find.
We hoped we could use SSH-tunneling, but it appears the only
'obvious' implementation has EBCDIC-ASCII issues, and so can't
handle binary
(now, I don't know for sure that ODBC is binary, but I'm hedging my
bets.)
I saw on a website that you have been looking at this, and I was
wondering if you have implemented it to a level which we can try it out, or
can point us in the right direction if we're going down the wrong path...
Many thanks in advance for any help you can give.
Happy Holidays!
Cheers,
:D
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Daragh Fitzpatrick Daragh at UChicago.edu (773) 702-8976
Solutions Architect NSIT Administrative Systems
Renewal Projects and Architecture University of Chicago
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Let contacts update themselves - http://www.Plaxo.com
On Fri, Dec 19, 2003 at 10:45:11AM -0600, Daragh Fitzpatrick wrote:> > The vendor that is providing the ODBC listener on the Mainframe side > says they can provide SSL encryption as an alternative, but there are no > SSL-enabled ODBC drivers on the distributed side that we can find. > > We hoped we could use SSH-tunneling, but it appears the only > 'obvious' implementation has EBCDIC-ASCII issues, and so can't handle binary > (now, I don't know for sure that ODBC is binary, but I'm hedging my bets.)If the server side is in fact SSL-enabled, you could use stunnel on the clients for SSL tunneling. I don't know if it is iteroperable between ASCII and EBCDIC platforms, though. Also, if I remember correctly, somebody has ported SSH to BS/2000, which is also a EBCDIC platform. You might find something about this in the list archives. Regards, Florian
My knowledge of IBM hardware is weak at beast. I know more about AIX/pSeries (which is not much). So regretfully I can't give you any direct help. And yes, ODBC may have blob types so it could heavily depend on the encoding. However, if you have non-OS/390 clients and you can do the communications without SSH to secure it. Then I would suspect the ODBC connection would do the translation for you and it may not be an issue. Any direct issues feel free to post. We may be able to give you advice, but I doubt anyone on the project team has an OS/390 box in their basement (and heaven help us if we did =). - Ben On Fri, 19 Dec 2003, Daragh Fitzpatrick wrote:> > Hi Martin, > > my name's Daragh, and I'm a renewal projects architect in the > University of Chicago. I saw your name on a listserv - openssh-unix-dev. I > was hoping you could lend some insight to a problem we're trying to solve. > > We are trying to find a way for an Oracle database to connect > securely to a mainframe (OS/390 running Model204 DB) through ODBC (Open > Database Connection protocol), which is session-based. > > The vendor that is providing the ODBC listener on the Mainframe side > says they can provide SSL encryption as an alternative, but there are no > SSL-enabled ODBC drivers on the distributed side that we can find. > > We hoped we could use SSH-tunneling, but it appears the only > 'obvious' implementation has EBCDIC-ASCII issues, and so can't handle binary > (now, I don't know for sure that ODBC is binary, but I'm hedging my bets.) > > I saw on a website that you have been looking at this, and I was > wondering if you have implemented it to a level which we can try it out, or > can point us in the right direction if we're going down the wrong path... > > Many thanks in advance for any help you can give. > > Happy Holidays! > > Cheers, > > :D > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > Daragh Fitzpatrick Daragh at UChicago.edu (773) 702-8976 > > Solutions Architect NSIT Administrative Systems > Renewal Projects and Architecture University of Chicago > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > Let contacts update themselves - http://www.Plaxo.com >