Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
be written by the database vendor or by a third-party developer that specializes in
ODBC connectivity. Here is an example of the Oracle ODBC Driver Configuration
dialog box for setting up an ODBC connection to a database.
After the ODBC connection is made, you can run queries. Shown below are
the results of the DEPT table query from a Microsoft Access session.
ODBC driver
An interface, usually at the operating-
system level, that supports the connec-
tion of an ODBC-compliant application to
a specific database platform.
Applications that use ODBC are not limited to tools such as Microsoft
Access, which also has its own client-based database engine in addition to the
capability to connect to other databases. Spreadsheets, financial applications,
and statistical analysis packages are among the many types of applications that
need to connect to a database for their source data. ODBC gives the end user
the freedom to choose which external database to use and frees the application
vendor from needing to develop a special connection routine for every possible
database source.
, which stands for Java Database Connectivity, is very similar to ODBC
in that JDBC provides a common set of routines to allow a Java developer to con-
nect to any SQL-compliant database without knowing the specifics of the target
database. The key difference between ODBC and JDBC is that JDBC is specifi-
cally for Java applications and ODBC is application-neutral.
JDBC
JDBC (Java Database Connectivity)
A set of library routines specific to the
Java language that allows a Java applica-
tion to easily connect to and process SQL
statements against an Oracle database.
