Beginner UDA Questions

How do your drivers work?

Express Edition



OpenLink's Express Edition drivers are Single-Tier, wire protocol drivers based on the JDBC protocol. While these drivers provide ODBC data access from ODBC compliant applications to SQL data stores, the ODBC drivers bridge to a type 4 JDBC driver that is seamlessly bundled into OpenLink's product. This JDBC driver bridges the gap between the local driver and the remote database.



Choose Express Edition drivers if you need a low cost solution and there is some flexibility regarding data access performance and stability. Express Edition drivers are not an enterprise grade solution.



Single Tier



OpenLink's Single-Tier drivers are clientside drivers. You install most Single-Tier drivers on a machine, which contains the database native client. The drivers connect to this native client and send queries through the client--to the database. In essence, the database native client speaks a proprietary network protocol that bridges the gap between a local driver and a remote database.



OpenLink's MS SQLServer, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Sybase drivers are "wire protocol" drivers. These drivers contain libraries, which allow them to speak their database's native network protocol. Hence, you may install these drivers on any supported operating system. These drivers do not need the database native client to connect.



Choose Single-Tier drivers if you need an enterprise grade solution, but security prevents you from installing software on your actual DBMS server. Single-Tier drivers are also ideal if you want simplicity in deployment, but you cannot compromise on performance. OpenLink's Single-Tier drivers are the fastest drivers in the product portfolio.



Multi Tier



OpenLink's Multi-Tier drivers are client/server drivers. You must install the client on the machine, which contains your client application. You must install OpenLink's Multi-Tier server components on a machine that contains the database or the database native client, unless you have MS SQLServer, MySQL, or PostgreSQL.*



OpenLink's Multi-Tier server components consist of a Broker and a database-specific agent. The Broker responds to client requests and spawns the database agent that is designed to speak to the intended database. This agent is written in the database CLI and may speak directly to the database or proxy queries through the database native client. Moreover, the database agent is responsible for the return of data to the calling application.



Choose Multi-Tier drivers if you need an enterprise solution with advanced debugging and configuration capabilities. The Multi-Tier Session Rules Book allows you to configure virtually every facet of your connection, and it allows you to secure your database with complex rule-based security.



NOTE*: If you have MS SQLServer, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and/or Sybase databases may install their Multi-Tier server components on any supported operating system. These agents speak the database native communications protocol. Consequently, they can establish connections to remote databases without the aid of the database native client.