COMPONENT OF CONNECTIVITY

Application Programming Interface (API)

       

In computer programming, an application programming interface (API) is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. An API expresses a software componentin terms of its operations, inputs, outputs, and underlying types. An API defines functionalities that are independent of their respective implementations, which allows definitions and implementations to vary without compromising each other. A good API makes it easier to develop a program by providing all the building blocks. A programmer then puts the blocks together.

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)

         In computing, ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) is a standard programming language middleware API for accessing database management systems (DBMS). The designers of ODBC aimed to make it independent of database systems and operating systems. An application written using ODBC can be ported to other platforms, both on the client and server side, with few changes to the data access code.

Java Database Connectivity(JDBC)

         JDBC is a Java database connectivity technology (Java Standard Edition platform) from Oracle Corporation. This technology is an API for theJava programming language that defines how a client may access a database. It provides methods for querying and updating data in a database. JDBC is oriented towards relational databases. A JDBC-to-ODBC bridge enables connections to any ODBC-accessible data source in the JVM host environment.

Embedded SQL

         Embedded SQL is a method of combining the computing power of a programming language and the database manipulation capabilities of SQL. Embedded SQL statements are SQL statements written inline with the program source code of the host language. The embedded SQL statements are parsed by an embedded SQL preprocessor and replaced by host-languagecalls to a code library. The output from the preprocessor is then compiled by the host compiler. This allows programmers to embed SQL statements in programs written in any number of languages such as C/C++, COBOL and Fortran

ActiveX Data Objects(ADO)

          In computing, Microsoft's ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) comprises a set of Component Object Model (COM) objects for accessing data sources. A part of MDAC (Microsoft Data Access Components), it provides a middleware layer between programming languages and OLE DB (a means of accessing data stores, whether databases or not, in a uniform manner). ADO allows a developer to write programs that access data without knowing how the database is implemented; developers must be aware of the database for connection only. No knowledge of SQL is required to access a database when using ADO, although one can use ADO to execute SQL commands directly (with the disadvantage of introducing a dependency upon the type of database used).

OLE DB

          OLE DB (Object Linking and Embedding, Database, sometimes written as OLEDB or OLE-DB), an API designed by Microsoft, allows accessing data from a variety of sources in a uniform manner. The API provides a set of interfaces implemented using the Component Object Model (COM); it is otherwise unrelated to OLE. Microsoft originally intended OLE DB as a higher-level replacement for, and successor to, ODBC, extending its feature set to support a wider variety of non-relational databases, such as object databases and spreadsheets that do not necessarily implement SQL.

SQL/CLI

         The SQL/CLI, or Call-Level Interface, is an extension to the SQL standard is defined in SQL:1999 (based on CLI-95), but also available in later editions such as ISO/IEC 9075-3:2003. This extension defines common interfacing components (structures and procedures) that can be used to execute SQL statements from applications written in other programming languages. The SQL/CLI extension is defined in such a way that SQL statements and SQL/CLI procedure calls are treated as separate from the calling application's source code.

Remote Data Objects(RDO)

         Remote Data Objects (abbreviated RDO) is the name of an obsolete data access application programming interface primarily used in Microsoft Visual Basic applications on Windows 95 and later operating systems. This includes database connection, queries, stored procedures, result manipulation, and change commits. It allowed developers to create interfaces that can directly interact with Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) data sources on remote machines, without having to deal with the comparatively complex ODBC API