ODBC Questions

[rookie1010]

Hello

I had a bunch of ODBC questions, i would appreciate if you guys/gals could mystify ODBC.

If i create a *.mdb file using MS Access, am i creating an ODBC driver, or do i actually create the ODBC driver though the ODBC Data Source Administrator?

what does the ODBC driver contain, what langage is it written in? what is its extension?

 

[office politics]

odbc is driver, prolly a dll, that allows you to interact with particular databases. When you install MS Access on a windows box, you also instal a odbc driver. you can see this in the odbc administrator by looking at the driver tab. If you setup a data source in the administrator, it will preconfigure settings for an app to interact with a particular file.

i use odbc connections in ASP and PHP to interact with SQL, MS Access, Excel, & MySQL.

heres a good tutorial for using asp to interact with SQL. the CONN STRING at the top could easily be changed to interact with other types of databases

http://www.asp101.com/samples/db_edit.asp - click view ASP code to see conn string

 

[rookie1010]

thanks for the reply

So by adding new database files, one is not creating a new driver, correct?

so The dsn just adds an entry to the overall database library list

 

[office politics]

creating new database files does not create new odbc drivers.

a single odbc driver can be used to interact with many different database servers or files.

the dsn configures file/server location, usernames, passwords, etc used to connect to different database servers or files.