Connect to Firebird DB via ODBC

Question

I am trying to connect to a firebird DB via ODBC. I have an working ODBC Windows Connection (ODBC Data Sources 32 Bit) and also an established connection via Tableau. I tried using dbConnect but was not able to set the right parameters I guess. I tried

library(odbc)
con <- dbConnect(odbc::odbc(),
                 drv = "Firebird/InterBase(r) driver",
                 database = "VARIO",
                 uid = "xxx",
                 pwd = "xxx",
                 host = "192.xxx.xxx.xx",
                 port = "xxxxx")    

in e.g. Excel I can access the database by using the established windows connection. Anyways, sorry for my beginner formulation!

To add here, it seems I am running on 64 bit R Version

> Sys.info()[["machine"]]
[1] "x86-64"

After your comments I tried

con <- dbConnect(odbc::odbc(),
                 dsn = "VARIO",
                 database = "192.168.XX.X/56300:VARIO8",
                 uid = "XXX",
                 pwd = "XXX",
                 host = "192.168.XX.X",
                 port = "56300")

>Error: nanodbc/nanodbc.cpp:983: 01S00: [ODBC Firebird Driver]Unable to connect to data source: library 'C:\Users\XXX\Desktop\fbclient.dll' failed to load  [ODBC Firebird Driver]Invalid connection string attribute  [ODBC Firebird Driver]Invalid connection string attribute 

fbclient.dll is there where its supposed to be

What is more I did not put an driver. Whenever I ad

drv = "Firebird/InterBase(r) driver"

I get: Error in (function (classes, fdef, mtable) : unable to find an inherited method for function ‘dbConnect’ for signature ‘"character"’

Maybe this helps? This is from the Windows ODBC Data Sources and says 32/64 Bit. Don't know if this is imprtant

Any further Ideas?

Answer 1

Checking against the list of odbc-known DB drivers, Firebird doesn't seem to be a known driver.

library(odbc)
odbc::odbcListDrivers()

(src: https://rdrr.io/cran/odbc/man/odbcListDrivers.html)

I guess you would have to install that driver on your machine and then register the Data Source Name (DSN) to make it available to R.
Once that's done, please change the drv in your function call to dsn. drv refers to the odbc::odbc() argument which you've provided above, while dsn should then refer to the installed driver by its registered name (unless I'm mixing up things badly here. I've luckily never had to leave the warm comfort of RPostgreSQL...).

So it would look something like this:

library(odbc)
con <- dbConnect(drv = odbc::odbc(),
                 dsn = "Firebird", # this should be the DSN you have set
                 database = "VARIO",
                 uid = "xxx",
                 pwd = "xxx",
                 host = "192.xxx.xxx.xx",
                 port = "xxxxx")