ODBC stands for Open Database Connectivity. ODBC is
an interface standard that provides a common application programming
interface (API) to access databases. Most software that runs in the
Windows operating environment follows this standard for data access
so that you can access data created by a variety of software applications.
ODBC functionality is provided by three main components:
The following figure displays the components of ODBC
functionality. The ODBC Driver Manager, which was developed by Microsoft,
manages the interaction between a client application and one or more
ODBC drivers.