Re: ODBC

At 14:04 10/10/00 +0100, Abe Asghar wrote: >I use PHP3 and PostgreSQL very successfully. What I don't understand is >ODBC. I have read a little about it but it appears to be a Microsoft type >product. Is this something I should consider learning more about if I want >to interact also with other databases. Will it mean my system is more >scalable? ODBC stands for Open Database Connectivity (or womething like that). It was originally intended as a definition of a cross platform API. Like most standards, there is a history of factions and arguments.... ODBC is avaiable to run on Posix platforms (inc Unix & Linux). Try searching on www.freshmeat.net for the source code. The original objective was to produce a DBMS independent abstraction layer such that you could potentially switch, say, from PgSQL to Oracle without re-writing any of your queries. In most cases this is not really possible, but its a lot less painless than converting code written to use native drivers. HTH Colin