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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. 


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