Posted by Mike Saunders on August 06, 2008 at 14:10:36:
In Reply to: Re: ODBC question posted by Jim Guerber on August 06, 2008 at 13:04:07:
Have not done any database stuff in a while.
Here is some background info (from the web) to digest.
Seems like OLEDB is still the current Database driver.
Unless you have a driver to access the Database Natively
(like the dotnet Native MS-SQL Driver.)
I know other BIG DB's have Native drivers also,
I do not know what mySQL supports.
Probably will depend a lot upon the Database, the driver(s) it
supports and the API's available to access the drivers.
ODBC was and is one of the oldest technologies.
It was developed by Microsoft and probably is one of the few Microsoft
technologies to become popular without being questioned. It is widely
"seen as an open" standard. ODBC was limited in its functionality and
provided low-level database access. It worked in a two layer manner.
An ODBC manager and ODBC drivers for various data sources. Any database
provider could write an ODBC driver for its product and rest assured it
will work the same way. It was one of the biggest hits by Microsoft and
is still regarded as a standard de facto data access mechanism.
ADO came later, added more features and made accessing data much more
easy by implementing a matured Object Model. ADO was a matured data access
method which was built after using the experiences gained by DAO and RDO
implementations.
OLEDB came even later. It was fully COM based (COM+ to be precise).
DAO had become rather complex. Data access object models came once full
circle when OLEDB came. It implemented a rather simple Object Model
(which looked more like JDBC).
ADO.Net is a later version of ADO which was developed keeping in mind .Net
computing framework. ADO.Net is very different (and supposedly much more efficient).
ADO is an application library. Basically a set of classes that let you
interact with many different data sources using the same (nearly) code
regardless of the data source. ODBC and OLEDB are data source interface
drivers. These operate on a lower level then ADO.
Like this:
Application --> ADO --> ODBC --> Database
or
Application --> ADO --> OLEDB --> Database
Using this kind of scheme lets you change one of the layers without
changing the others (usually).
ODBC is older than OLEDB but is an Industry standard supported by almost
everybody. OLEDB is Microsoft only. OLEDB does come with an interface driver
itself so you could do the following if you had to.
Application --> ADO --> OLEDB --> ODBC --> Database
Then there is JDBC (Java Database Drivers)
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