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Chapter 4: ODBC Programming

Introduction to ODBC programming

Introduction to ODBC programming

The ODBC interface is defined by a set of function calls, called the ODBC API (Application Programming Interface).

To write ODBC applications for Adaptive Server Anywhere, you need:

• The Adaptive Server Anywhere software.

• A C compiler capable of creating programs for your environment.

• We also recommend that you obtain the Microsoft ODBC Software Development Kit. This is available on the Microsoft Developer Network, and provides documentation and additional tools for testing ODBC applications.

Applications that use the ODBC interface can work with many different database systems. Adaptive Server Anywhere supports the ODBC API on UNIX and OS/2, in addition to the Windows and Windows NT environments. Having multi-platform ODBC support makes portable database application development much easier.

ODBC conformance

Adaptive Server Anywhere Version 6 provides support for ODBC 3.0.

Levels of ODBC support

ODBC features are arranged according to a level of conformance. Features are either Core, Level 1, or Level 2, with level 2 being the most complete level of ODBC support. These features are listed in the ODBC Programmer's Reference, which is available from Microsoft Corporation as part of the ODBC software development kit or from the Microsoft Web site, at the following Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/data/odbc/techmat.htm.

Features supported by Adaptive Server Anywhere

Adaptive Server Anywhere ODBC 3.0 support is as follows:

• Core conformance

  Adaptive Server Anywhere supports all Core level features.

• Level 1 conformance

  Adaptive Server Anywhere supports all Level 1 features, except for asynchronous execution of ODBC functions.

  Adaptive Server Anywhere does support multiple threads sharing a single connection. The requests from the different threads are serialized by Adaptive Server Anywhere.

• Level 2 conformance

  Adaptive Server Anywhere supports all Level 2 features, except for the following:

  • Three part names of tables and views. This is not applicable for Adaptive Server Anywhere.

  • Asynchronous execution of ODBC functions for specified individual statements.

  • Ability to time out login request and SQL queries.

ODBC 3.0 new features

While you can use new ODBC 3.0 features, such as descriptors, in your ODBC applications, ODBC 2.x applications will continue to work with Adaptive Server Anywhere and the ODBC 3.0 driver manager.

The ODBC 3.0 driver manager

The ODBC driver manager is part of the ODBC software supplied with Adaptive Server Anywhere. The ODBC 3.0 driver manager has a new interface for configuring ODBC data sources.