New smallscale Jaguar features...

uoba

Re: member
ThinkSecret state:

<b>ODBC. Appearing for the first time in build 6C48 of Jaguar, we now see that the new OS will include an app called ODBC Administrator. ODBC, or Open Database Connectivity, is an API used for database access.</b>

...Can anyone elaborate on this?:)
 
I think this is basically a framework for database programmers, to hook their programs into the UI/OS more easily. But, I should really shut up, because that is just a wild guess.
 
ODBC has been in Windows for a long time... I remember it back in Windows 3.1!

Are you guys just now getting this? I've never used it, but it's just weird how the Mac is just now getting this tool.

here's what the Windows Help file says about ODBC... pretty much tailored to Microsoft, but works anyway...
You can use Data Sources Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) to access data from a variety of database management systems. For example, if you have a program that accesses data in a SQL database, Data Sources (ODBC) will let you use the same program to access data in a Visual FoxPro database. To do this, you must add software components called drivers to your system. Data Sources (ODBC) helps you add and configure these drivers.
 
ODBC is pretty much a Microsoft technology (they came up with it). It allows a "transparent" bridge between software and database. Theoretically, this allows a software to switch to another database without code changes, as long as the database calls are ODBC calls. In practice, it does have its limitations.

Mac may have just gotten this capability (I really think it's been around on the Mac longer though, but I think this is the first time it's implemented into a Mac OS), but most Mac users can just use JDBC (Java Database Connectivity), which has the same concept as ODBC, but the driver is written in Java instead. JDBC is a pretty "hot" technology, and almost all DBs out there have a JDBC driver, and it's widely implemented.
 
Hi Folks,

ODBC has been around on the Mac for as long as OpenLink (almost 10 years).

We have ODBC drivers for pretty much all databases on all platforms, allowing Mac to be a first-class citizen in data-access.

What this new inclusion in Jaguar does is make the ODBC control panels and developer SDK's availalbe by default (think ODBC Admin and MDAC under Windows).

The ODBC API is much more mature than JDBC, and has much broader database support, but we support JDBC too :)

Any questions, drop me a line.

Best regards,
Andrew Hill
OpenLink Software
 
ODBC is an **ORACLE** technology. They developed it to allow all the Desktop PC's communicate with their mainframe databases.
 
Hi Stovak,

ODBC is not just an Oracle technology, but was developed by many of the RDBMS vendors, IBM, Microsoft, etc as an implementation of the SQL CLI partition of the spec that deal with making SQL portable across databases.

and thanks Roger - I like my title too :)
 
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