uda.odbc

ODBC Drivers

ODBC Drivers
ODBC is the acronym for Open DataBase? Connectivity, a Microsoft Universal Data Access standard that started life as the Windows implementation of the X/Open SQL Call Level Interface specification. Since its inception in 1992 it has rapidly become the industry standard interface for developing database-independent applications. ODBC consists of two key components:

• ODBC Driver Manager - an application binds to this generic library which is responsible for loading the requested ODBC Driver.
  
• ODBC Driver - dynamically loaded by the ODBC Driver manager for making connection to target Database.
  Although starting life as an exclusively Microsoft Windows Data Access API, as its popularity grew, application-authors and database-vendors alike longed for this Data Access standard to be available on other operating systems. This resulted in companies like OpenLink? building their own ODBC Driver Managers and suite of ODBC Drivers for other operating systems - Linux, Unix, Mac OS, OpenVMS? and others. The OpenLink? -branded ODBC Driver Manager is called iODBC, being the acronym for Independent Open DataBase? Connectivity, an Open Source platform-independent implementation of both the ODBC and X/Open specifications. OpenLink? also provides a suite of Universal Data Access ODBC Drivers for the most popular databases across multiple operating systems.

Platform Support

Support for client, server, and application server operating systems

32- and 64-bit components

Enables the development and utilization of 32- or 64-Bit DBMS independent applications.

Broad Operating System Support

Enables the development of ODBC compliant applications and the utilization of ODBC Drivers on non Windows platforms such as; Linux (x86, PPC, Itanium, Opteron), Mac OS X, Mac OS Classic, FreeBSD? , Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, HP True64 UNIX, IRIX, Altix, SCO UnixWare? , and others.

Database Engine Support

Backend database engine support

| Broad backend Database Support | Enables DBMS independent application utilization and deployment across a vast array of industry leading DBMS engines that includes; Oracle (7.x - 10.x), SQL Server (6.x - 2005), DB2 (6.x - 8.x), Sybase (10.x - 12.x), Progress (7.x - 10.x), Ingres (6.4 - II family), Informix (5.x - 9.x & IDS 2000), MySQL? , and PostgreSQL? .

Performance

Blistering Performance

Delivery of data access performance levels across ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET and OLE DB that don't compromise viability of DBMS independent application development and deployment.

Network Aware Record Retrieval

Enabling the retrieval and insertion of multiple DBMS records in batches over the network with a minimal number of network hops.

Standards Compliance

| International character support | Enables the development and deployment of international applications that are independent of underlying database engine.

Standards Compliance

| ODBC 3.5 Compliance | Enables broad compatibility between an extensive collection of older and newer ODBC Applications across an array of platforms.

Performance

| Multithreaded | Enables exploitation of scalability benefits arising from the use of multiple CPUs or Clusters while developing or using DBMS independent applications.

Standards Compliance

Supports Advanced Data Access API functionality

Enables the development and utilization of DBMS application with DBMS independent granularity that extends to challenging areas such as scalar function calls, dates and timestamps manipulation, outer join handling, and SQL stored procedure invocation etc.

Complete ODBC Scrollable Cursor Model Support

Provides ODBC compliant applications with a flexible model for handling sensitivity to data changes using the following scrollable cursor models: Forward-Only, Static, KeySet? , Dynamic, and Mixed.

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