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<center><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=+3>PROGRAMMER MANUAL</font></font></b>
<br><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Peter Harvey</font></b>
<br><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">19.DEC.01</font></b></center>
<p><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Introduction</font></b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Welcome to the unixODBC Programmer
Manual. This manual is a starting point for a programmer who is interested
in developing an application which *uses* ODBC. This manual does not address
Driver development or any other development which is internal to the ODBC sub-system.</font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font>
<p><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Why Use ODBC?</font></b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">ODBC provides a portable Application
Programmers Interface (API) with which to access data. This means that
your data access code will recompile without changes on all popular platforms.
In practice; portability is sometimes hampered by incomplete drivers. However;
the core ODBC functionality (the most used functionality) is always supported
any working driver. Other advantages to developing with ODBC include;</font>
<ul>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica">most popular API of its kind</font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica">most mature API of its kind</font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica">skills more reusable/easily found</font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica">hundreds, if not thousands, of applications
use it</font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica">available on all majour platforms</font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica">easy to change data storage solution/vendor
(ah; freedom)</font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica">easy to upscale data storage (developer and
end-user)</font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica">arguably the most complete API of its kind</font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica">many books on the subject</font></li>
<li>
<font face="Arial,Helvetica">greater support base</font></li>
</ul>
<b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Languages Supported</font></b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">ODBC is based upon a C API. C++ programmers
will find a number of C++ class libraries for using the ODBC API.
These are wrappers - using the C API internally but can provide
a much nicer way to use ODBC for C++ programmers.</font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Any language which can call a C API should
be able to use the ODBC API and most languages, such as PHP and Perl,
provide an interface to work with ODBC but these are not covered in this
manual.</font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font>
<p><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Architecture</font></b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Client Libraries</font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">These are client libraries which are specific
to the particular database being used. These, often, provide a C API of
their own which is used by Driver developers. In some cases these exist
inside of the Driver itself or are statically linked into the Driver. Any
Client Libraries required by a Driver will be a part of the installation
of your Driver or will simply be a requirement for the installation of
your Driver. Sometimes Client Libraries must be configured before any ODBC configuration.</font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Driver</font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">Driver Manager</font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">The Driver Manager acts as a gateway to
the ODBC drivers. The main advantage to having a Driver Manager is
that the end-user can configure the Driver Manager to use a different Driver
than the one original conceived of by the programmer.</font><font face="Arial,Helvetica"></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica">It as virtually identical functions declarations
as a Driver which means that one *could* create an application</font>
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