Open Database Connectivity for Mac OS X

It continues to amaze me that the fundamental implications of corporate data access remains misunderstood by all parties in the ITsphere. How can any organization afford to be ambivalent about where data is stored, and their ability to transform this data into information and knowledge (ultimate competitive advantage)? Data is the most valuable company asset (we even had data in the enterprise before computers!).

Mac OS X is attempting to make a serious push into the enterprise, but how can this be taken seriously if solving one of the biggest problems in the enterprise todayisn't a flagship itemdriving theenterprise marketing strategy? The excerpt below simply sums this up:

One of the new, albeit virtually undocumented features included in Jaguar is ODBC, or Open Database Connectivity. ODBC allows programs to connect to databases from different vendors using the same set of connectivity protocols. This allows for simplified database programming as well as database access from programs that normally would not allow such access. For instance, with ODBC you can use Excel to get data from MySQL, or you can use FileMaker to get data from Oracle.

From article titled Open Database Connectivity in Jaguarby Andrew Anderson

Open Database Connectivity is the only mechanism today that will enable any application to connect to any database without compromising choices across the following lines: Operating System, Programming Language, Desktop Productivity Tools, and Database Engine. All alternatives fail in one of the listed areas, with the ultimate destination being the painful realization that you are down a technology cul-de-sac (and these cost money via integration and data access quagmires).