ODBC Drivers on USDA Computers

[brownag]

Note that we have a "new" (to us) ODBC driver available in the ODBC Data Source Administrator: ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server . It can be used to connect to the NASIS local database.

It appears the old one we have (which is still pretty new to us) is from 2011 and the new one from 2015, if I am not mistaken. Up 'till relatively recently we were using "SQL Server" which is even older still (2006?). I believe Microsoft ODBC Driver 17 for SQL Server is the latest (which at least I do not currently have)

Notably this resolves some "Invalid Descriptor" errors with querying tables/specific fields from the NASIS database with some tools such as nanodbc library, the driver used in the {odbc} R package.

We are planning to move to {DBI} and {odbc} as the primary database interface for NASIS queries in {soilDB} -- see #149.

• In #149, all current built-in NASIS-related queries have been "stabilized" to work with the 2011 driver, as well as SQLite... but folks who commonly use custom queries against their local database may want to update to this slightly newer version of the ODBC driver.

I am going to update the "ODBC connection to local NASIS guide" images etc.

• [x] http://ncss-tech.github.io/AQP/soilDB/setup_local_nasis.html

[brownag]

A couple images and some of the instructions from http://ncss-tech.github.io/AQP/soilDB/setup_local_nasis.html have been updated to reflect this new driver version.