Overview of ODBC

ODBC is short hand for Open  Database Connectivity. It is the standard software Application Program interface (API) method for using Database management system (DBMS). It was designed in an intent to be a language, database and operating system  independent.

ODBC Architecture:

This architecture comprises of four main components:

Application programming Interface (API): This layer is responsible odbcfor calling ODBC functions to a datasource, send, receive and disconnect.

Driver Manager: This  layer is responsible for providing the information to an application, dynamically loading of driver as needed. State transition checking is also provided.

Driver: It process the ODBC functions call and is responsible for managing all the exchanges between application and a relational Database. It may also translate the standard SQL statements to native SQL of the target data source.

Data Source : This consist the main data and the database engine.

Using this architecture means is that you can access different ODBC data sources from different locations, using the same function call available in ODBC API.

Advantages of ODBC:

  1. It is Well integrated with RAD tools
  2. It speeds up the application development process and also simplifies it.
  3. It interfaces easily with data bound components in development environments for eg java, VB etc.
  4. It allows more than one concurrent connections
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