ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) : A set of standards that allow applications that are not dependent on any one specific database to process SQL statements against any database that supports SQL
Many tools in the Windows (and Unix) environment can take advantage of a common framework known as ODBC, which stands for Open Database Connectivity. In a nutshell, ODBC allows applications that are ODBC-compliant to connect to virtually any database without knowing the details of how to connect directly to the database. All of the details are hidden in the ODBC driver itself. The driver may 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 connection 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.
JDBC, 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 connect to any SQL-compliant database without knowing the specifics of the target database. The key difference between ODBC and JDBC is that JDBC is specifically for Java applications and ODBC is application-neutral. JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) : A set of library routines specific to the Java language that allows a Java application to easily connect to and process SQL statements against an Oracle database.
