ODBC 101: The Beginner's Guide to Open Database Connectivity

The Essentials Series:
Optimizing Database
Connection Performance
Open Database
Connectivity
sponsored by
by Mark Scott
Open Database Connectivity............................................................................................................1 Designed to Perform ........................................................................................................................1 Making Efficient Use of Resources .................................................................................................3 Reaching Out Into the Enterprise.....................................................................................................4 Reaching Optimal Performance.......................................................................................................5
i
Copyright Statement © 2008 Realtime Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. This site contains materials that have been created, developed, or commissioned by, and published with the permission of, Realtime Publishers, Inc. (the "Materials") and this site and any such Materials are protected by international copyright and trademark laws. THE MATERIALS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. The Materials are subject to change without notice and do not represent a commitment on the part of Realtime Publishers, Inc or its web site sponsors. In no event shall Realtime Publishers, Inc. or its web site sponsors be held liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained in the Materials, including without limitation, for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary or consequential damages whatsoever resulting from the use of any information contained in the Materials. The Materials (including but not limited to the text, images, audio, and/or video) may not be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any way, in whole or in part, except that one copy may be downloaded for your personal, non-commercial use on a single computer. In connection with such use, you may not modify or obscure any copyright or other proprietary notice. The Materials may contain trademarks, services marks and logos that are the property of third parties. You are not permitted to use these trademarks, services marks or logos without prior written consent of such third parties. Realtime Publishers and the Realtime Publishers logo are registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners. If you have any questions about these terms, or if you would like information about licensing materials from Realtime Publishers, please contact us via e-mail at info@realtimepublishers.com.
ii
Open Database Connectivity
Since the SQL Access Group created the Call Level Interface, ODBC has become the most ubiquitous method for connecting to relational database sources (Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/110093). ODBC was developed to allow programmers to access relational data in a uniform manner, regardless of the database backend. ODBC translates those generic commands into the specific esoteric commands of the database backend, so the quality of the driver directly determines the performance of the database connectivity layer. The performance of these drivers varies widely. By understanding the architecture of the ODBC driver, the manner in which it utilizes computer resources, and the scalability of the component, you can make intelligent decisions in choosing and implementing the best drivers for any given enterprise architecture. And with the explosive growth of data access, even small performance gains for each instance can make a big difference in the operation, cost, and maintainability of an organization's data access infrastructure.
Designed to Perform ODBC is based on a pair of components working at the client application. An ODBC driver manager provides a uniform interface for connecting to and interacting with relational data sources. The architecture is flexible enough that different flavors of SQL can be passed to the server, yet uniform enough that the coder knows what steps he or she must take to work with the database, regardless of what that databas... [download for more]