ODBC

ODBC stands for Open Data Base Connectivity and was developed by Microsoft. ODBC offers connectivity to a wide range of back-end databases from a wide range of front-ends. ODBC is vendor neutral.

Oracle (and other organizations) provides ODBC drivers that allow one to connect to Oracle Databases.

Software stack

A working Oracle ODBC stack looks like this:

     +--------------------+  Visual Basic, Excel, Access,
     |  ODBC Application  |  Oracle Power Objects, etc.
     +--------------------+
               |
     +--------------------+
     |   Driver Manager   |  This is ODBC.DLL
     +--------------------+
               |
     +--------------------+  This is the Oracle ODBC Driver or
     |    ODBC Driver     |  driver for a different data source/ vendor
     +--------------------+  
               |
     +--------------------+  Oracle's SQL*Net (only for remote database)
     | Database Transport |  or other database transport
     +--------------------+
               |
     +--------------------+  TCP/IP or
     |  Network Transport |  other protocol driver
     +--------------------+  (optional - only for remote connections)
               |
     +--------------------+  Your Oracle database or
     |    Data Source     |  other data source you connect to
     +--------------------+

Also see

• ODBC FAQ - Oracle ODBC Frequently asked questions

Glossary of Terms
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