Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a Microsoft born technology that is fast becoming an industry standard and is supported by almost every database vendor. There are two layers you must be aware of, the ODBC Driver and the ODBC API interface which is based on the Call Level Interface specification of the SQL Access Group. We will be working with the ODBC API to interact with a vendor specific ODBC driver what will be acting as a bridge to communicate with the vendor's database.