Introduction to PowerBuilder

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ODBC

ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) is a standard application programming interface developed by Microsoft. It uses SQL as the standard programming language. Irrespective of the data source's platform, an application can connect to different ODBC-compliant data sources as long as the ODBC-compliant drivers exist.

The ODBC API defines:

A library of function calls that allows you connecting to the data source, log on to the DBMS, executing SQL statements/ stored procedures and retrieving the result set(s)
A standard set of error codes and standard representation of data types
SQL syntax based on the X/Open and SQL Access Group (SAG) CAE specification 1992.

It defines a standard SQL grammar and two sets of function calls based on the SAG CLI specification. They are named core grammar and core functions respectively. It allows you to connect to a vast array of database systems.
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