A Julia library for interacting with the ODBC API

Documentation	Build Status

The package is registered in the General registry and so can be installed with Pkg.add.

julia> using Pkg; Pkg.add("ODBC")

using ODBC, DataFrames

# For production: Use getpass() to securely prompt for credentials
pwd = Base.getpass("Enter password")
conn = ODBC.Connection("DSN=mydb"; user="admin", password=pwd)
# Credentials are automatically shredded from memory after connection

# Execute queries
result = DBInterface.execute(conn, "SELECT * FROM users") |> DataFrame

Important for production systems: Regular Julia String objects cannot be securely erased from memory. For sensitive credentials, use Base.SecretBuffer:

# RECOMMENDED: Use getpass() for interactive password input (won't echo to screen)
pwd = Base.getpass("Enter password")
conn = ODBC.Connection("DSN=mydb"; user="alice", password=pwd)

# For non-interactive contexts (environment variables)
pwd = Base.SecretBuffer(ENV["DB_PASSWORD"])
conn = ODBC.Connection("DSN=mydb"; user="alice", password=pwd)

# For Docker secrets or file-based credentials
pwd = open("/run/secrets/db_password") do io
    sb = Base.SecretBuffer()
    write(sb, io)
    seekstart(sb)
end
conn = ODBC.Connection("DSN=mydb"; user="alice", password=pwd)

# AVOID: Plain strings (stay in memory until garbage collected)
conn = ODBC.Connection("DSN=mydb"; user="alice", password="secret123")

Why SecretBuffer?

• Minimizes the lifetime of credentials in memory
• Reduces exposure to memory dumps, core dumps, and debugging tools
• Required for security compliance (PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOC2)
• Protects against credential leakage in long-running processes

• STABLE — most recently tagged version of the documentation.
• LATEST — in-development version of the documentation.

The package is tested against Julia 1.3+ on Linux, OSX, and Windows.

Contributions are very welcome, as are feature requests and suggestions. Please open an issue if you encounter any problems or would just like to ask a question.

To run tests locally on Linux, you need to have

• the MariaDB ODBC connectors downloaded and in a specific directory (as per .travis.yml):

  curl -O https://downloads.mariadb.com/Connectors/odbc/connector-odbc-3.1.7/mariadb-connector-odbc-3.1.7-ga-debian-x86_64.tar.gz
  mkdir mariadb64; tar xfz mariadb-connector-odbc-3.1.7-ga-debian-x86_64.tar.gz -C mariadb64
  curl -O https://downloads.mariadb.com/Connectors/odbc/connector-odbc-3.1.7/mariadb-connector-odbc-3.1.7-ga-debian-i686.tar.gz
  mkdir mariadb32; tar xfz mariadb-connector-odbc-3.1.7-ga-debian-i686.tar.gz -C mariadb32MySQL

• MariaDB listening on 127.0.0.1:3306 with root user root having an empty password. An easy way to do this is with docker:

  docker run -e MYSQL_ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=1  -it -p 3306:3306 mysql

• the TRAVIS_BUILD_DIR env var set before running tests.

  env TRAVIS_BUILD_DIR=$(pwd) julia --project=@.
  julia> ]
  (ODBC) pkg> test