Microsoft's Industry Standard ODBC Client API One of the nicer things that Microsoft has done for the industry lately was in getting the ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) API supported by both RDBMS and tool vendors. A superset of the SQL Access Group (SAG) CLI specification [link?], ODBC is now in it's second incarnation and is due to be fully ratified by SAG soon as the official CLI implementation. The most important thing to understand is that ODBC is a client API only. It is not all the middleware you'll need to connect clients to servers. Typically, ODBC drivers are little shims that present the ODBC API to tools and then funnel all t he interaction through the existing RDBMS-proprietary database connectivity middleware. Our diagram using Oracle middleware should make this more clear: [Diagram: Where ODBC Fits -- Client Only] Newer implementations by third party database networking middleware vendors offer ODBC support at the client, and then sort out the RDBMS server differences on the other end of the network. [link to TechGnosis 3.0 info?] In that case, ODBC isn't used to support multiple middlewares, but only to support tools that don't support that middleware's proprietary API. Increasingly, those vendors are de-emphasizing or even dropping support for their native APIs. Many people claim that ODBC has weaknesses. Certainly, with an added layer of code to run, performance might suffer. Indeed, first generation ODBC drivers suffered from both functionality and performance problems. Now, however, the premier third party ODBC driver vendors (Intersolv/Q+E and Visigenics) offer consistant performance and feature support across RDBMSes, as do third party full middleware vendors like TechGnosis and IBI [link to vendors]. These vendors are even porting ODBC beyond Windows, including to the Macintosh and to Unix platforms. While most applications on those other platforms may not support ODBC yet, we expect ODBC to become predominant on all client platforms (for example, replacing Apple's DAL approach on the Macintosh). November 15, 1995 Print This Page E-mail this URL