The Full Form OBDC is Open Database Connectivity.

There are many advantages to using Open Database Connectivity interfaces for your database applications. They are well-integrated with many devices, operating systems and architectures, allowing you to reach out to all of your clients and staff with ease. Additionally, ODBC tools are extremely fast and efficient at serving or recording information. Open database tools save your company money as well and are fully supported in a variety of ways. The latest technology is constantly being incorporated into the software revisions and you will always be at the bleeding edge of the industry.

Complete Integration across Architectures

ODBC is useful for a variety of architectures, platforms, software tools and more.

RAD developers will be pleased to know that it is well-integrated with many of the major commercial and open source development environments available. You will be able to combine your choice of proprietary software or freeware with your ODBC interface and hardware. ODBC is also extremely easy to interface with a host of “data-bound” components in IDEs across the board. ODBC is also highly interoperable as it is becoming a widely adopted standard. With the rise of servers and sites creating an Internet based on PHP, databases and the latest HTML, ODBC is a natural key component of this trifecta. Because of this there are literally thousands commercial software and freeware products and applications available for you to work with.

Expediting the Development Process

Open database connectivity simplifies and speeds the application development process. You will be able to compound the effects of agile development techniques with ODBC to dramatically increase your application development time. The speed at which ODBC can operate will help you save a lot of time on the testing component of the process. Software development can be significantly sped up by switching to an ODBC interface. Of the two options available to programmers and architects working in C, C++, Delphi, Cold Fusion, ODBC is the better option. Although a proprietary code can be written for specific devices and databases (very common across the board), the ODBC standard interface is more interoperable with other systems and might be a better long-term investment for your business.

Financial Savings with ODBC

Choosing ODBC also saves you lots of money, because you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Not to mention that support is also freely available. Even if your company requires a support team for risk assessment and liability purposes, ODBC is easy to find paid technical support for. Ultimately, this saves you development time and costs. It also means that your systems engineers and programmers can be freed up on working on other projects, instead of trying to code house features and software in a unique interface.

Other Advantages of Open Database Connectivity

The ODBC has been and is being constantly developed. Some of the industry’s best professionals and programmers have invested thousands of hours into creating an interface that is fully interoperable with databases and interfaces everywhere. Because ODBC is under constant development, the most advanced features are constantly being tested and rolled out as part of the application.

Another unique aspect of ODBC is its special way of communicating with hardware. Instead of using driver libraries to communicate with devices, ODBC uses a direct wire protocol technology which interfaces with the device in question, resulting in unprecedented speeds. Often, this is even faster than applications written to the database native interface. ODBC uses pass-through mode or escape sequences when creating database-specific functions. Certain features not found in ODBC, but in other proprietary formats may look tempting, but similar effects can be achieved with alternate techniques using ODBC, without the sacrifice of speed. Speed is highly important in a testing and software development environment as you can assure that products see the light of day faster. ODBC is also streamlined to be focused directly on relational data types for the API. You must write out your data types in two-dimensional or rectangular structures. This helps to keep the database fast and data easy to access.

While it might be tempting to use some of the more recent three-dimensional database systems, ODBC is still faster if speed is important to you. Ultimately though, the biggest reason to switch to ODBC from a business perspective is the potential savings in time and costs for your company.