Connectivity of ODBC

Last Updated : 17 Mar, 2021

Open Database Connectivity or ODBC is an open standard Application Programming Interface (API) for accessing a database.It can manage multiple database management system by single application with same source code.

Database applications call functions in the ODBC interface, which are implemented in database-specific modules called drivers.Drivers are used to isolates applications from database-specific calls.

ODBC provides extensive data support for data also known as metadata.
ODBC provide variety of service to obtain data about type and functions.
ODBC use SQL syntax and whenever statement is transferred by a user to an ODBC driver it resembles and converts it into the appropriate SQL statement accepted by the basic database.
ODBC driver can develop a variety of applications that can communicate with a different Databases and switching application from one database to another can be enabled.
The architecture of ODBC-based data, Application is connected to ODBC Driver and Driver manager then this further links to database,which is useful to access information from database.
ODBC Driver processes ODBC activity calls, sends SQL requests to a specific data source and returns results in the system. The ODBC driver may also modify the system application to suit the syntax supported by the corresponding database.
Driver Manager loads driver for each application.

Pro's and Cons in connectivity of ODBC:

Pros :

It is well integrated into many different RAD tools.
It easily gets into various "data-bound" objects in various development sites such as Power builder, Delphi, Visual Basic and Java etc.
It also simplifies and speeds up app development.
It is also helpful to organize many different items at a time, with the help of templates provided by ODBC.
It also allows full integration which means that a single system can easily access different data management systems or we can also say that ODBC allows a single system to manage different types of DBMS depending on user requirement or available DBMS type.
With the help of built-in function we can create custom applications.

Cons :

ODBC drivers are not user friendly
ODBC drivers are not standardized.That's why clients maintain their own driver, naming tables which creates a problem for management of large sites
Slow speed
As ODBC specification specifies only application protocol so it basically inherits features of framework in which it is used on. Thus we can say that reliability depends on implementation of request/response protocol of underlying framework that is being used.

Connectivity of ODBC

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Article Tags :

DBMS
SQL

Connectivity of ODBC

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