From: Dan Nelson
Date: May 16 2003 3:54am
Subject: Re: Explaining unix ODBC in plain english
List-Archive: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/139983
Message-Id: <20030516035411.GV23782@dan.emsphone.com>
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In the last episode (May 15), Mark Matthews said:
> No. You write your code to work with the ODBC API, a driver allows
> the ODBC API to work with some other database. The picture basically
> looks like this:
> 
> [your code] -> [odbc] -> [MyODBC] -> [MySQL]

It's also useful to mention what the arrows are:

  [your code] -> [odbc] -> [MyODBC] -> [MySQL]
 
             ODBC      ODBC        driver
             client    server      dependant
             API       API         API

Both the ODBC APIs are public standards, so anyone can write software
that talks to ODBC, and anyone can drive an ODBC shim on top of an
existing database API.  This also explains why there are no portable MS
Access ODBC modules, for example: the ODBC driver module would need to
know the layout of .MDB files, or link in Microsoft's Jet database
engine, to be able to access the database.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson@stripped