Open Database Connectivity

Open Database Connectivity or ODBC is a standard software API for connecting to database management systems of various brands.

ODBC was initially developed by Microsoft and is based on SQL, X/Open[?], and the ISO/IEC standard Call Level Interface (CLI). Most database management systems nowadays support ODBC which means that computer programs[?] that rely on ODBC can connect to several different brands of DBMS' using the same basic code.

See Also

• Java Database Connectivity (JDBC)
• Database management system