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.
Recommended Articles