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).