Database Access

To read or write to a database, you must have an ODBC data source that is installed and configured for the relevant database, with read or write permissions as needed. The IBM SPSS Data Access Pack includes a set of ODBC drivers that can be used for this purpose, and these drivers are available from the download site. If you have questions about creating or setting permissions for ODBC data sources, contact your database administrator.

Supported ODBC drivers

For the latest information on which databases and ODBC drivers are supported and tested for use with IBM® SPSS® Modeler, see the product compatibility matrices on the corporate Support site (http://www.ibm.com/support).

Where to install drivers

Note: ODBC drivers must be installed and configured on each computer where processing might occur.
  • If you are running IBM SPSS Modeler in local (standalone) mode, the drivers must be installed on the local computer.
  • If you are running IBM SPSS Modeler in distributed mode against a remote IBM SPSS Modeler Server, the ODBC drivers need to be installed on the computer where IBM SPSS Modeler Server is installed.
  • If you need to access the same data sources from both IBM SPSS Modeler and IBM SPSS Modeler Server, the ODBC drivers must be installed on both computers.
  • If you are running IBM SPSS Modeler over Terminal Services, the ODBC drivers need to be installed on the Terminal Services server on which you have IBM SPSS Modeler installed.

Configuring Snowflake or Big Query databases

If you connect Snowflake or BigQuery using an SDAP driver, which works with either an Excel node or XML node that needs to start with the JVM instance, you might receive this error: 

Internal Error. Failed to open Java VM.

To resolve this issue, edit the SDAP ODBC configuration for these databases so that Modeler and SDAP use the same JVM instance. The following are examples of how to configure the JVM instance for Snowflake.

Windows
  1. In the Progress DataDirect Snowflake ODBC Driver Setup dialog, go to the SQL Engine tab.
  2. Change SQL Engine Modeler to 1-Server.
  3. Click Edit Server Settings, and change the Java Path to point to Java™ installed with Modeler.

    For example, [INSTALLDIR_MODELER]\jre\bin\java.exe

  4. Add -cp com.ddtek.snowflake.phoenix.sql.server.Server after the default settings in JVM Arguments.
  5. Click Apply to save the changes.
  6. Edit the environment variables for Windows, and add [INSTALLDIR_MODELER]\jre\bin and [INSTALLDIR_MODELER]\lib in variable Path.
  7. Start the Modeler client, and reconnect to the snowflake driver.