ODBC / Open Database Connectivity for Not Yet Techies

"Computer Careers: Using This Standard to Enable All Applications to Access Databases With SQL"

by Richard Stooker, President Info Ring Press and author of Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career

ODBC / Open Database Connectivity is an open standard that allows a lot of programs to use Structured Query Language / SQL statements to access information within a database, without using the database's normal proprietary interface. Therefore, a database management system that supports ODBC / Open Database Connectivity will allow programs using it to access its databases without going through the usual program-specific screens.

Thus ODBC / Open Database Connectivity is an application programming interface (API). You can create a database in any format you choose and, as long as it's compliant to the standard, a web browser using the standard can access your database. This can be useful on the Internet when many types of computers are running.

The standard is a layer between the querying application and the database. Normally they speak in different languages or operating systems and don't understand each other.

ODBC / Open Database Connectivity acts a translator, allowing what's called heterogeneous database access

The problem with ODBC / Open Database Connectivity is its complexity and it's not as efficient as using proprietary access. You must set up a driver on the web server that will be hosting your database. You must register the database with the driver.

ODBC / Open Database Connectivity was created by the SQL Access Group and released in September 1992. If you are programming in Java, there are ways to bridge it and JDBC / Java Database Connectivity.

Microsoft is the main supplier and supporter of ODBC / Open Database Connectivity. You can use it for such databases as:

Access
dBase
DB2
Excel
Text

ODBC / Open Database Connectivity is based on The Open Group standard SQL Call-Level Interface and knows how to use SQL statements that the target database understands.

Next: Open GL Open Graphics Library

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