Examining Data-Access APIs
By Ken North
Not long ago, it seemed that DBMS vendors were coalescing around standards such as SQL-92 and ODMG-93. However, the database picture has changed in the past two years and once again vendors are involved in database API wars. (For a list of this month's acronyms, see
Table 1.) One reason for the proliferation of APIs is that major DBMS vendors have been reinventing their core server platforms and adding APIs to expose new features. Vendors have upgraded server architectures so their servers can compete as OLTP, OLCP, and OLAP platforms. (See "Database Programmer," Web Techniques, June 1998 for a discussion of OLTP, OLCP, and OLAP.)
The push by Informix, IBM, and Oracle into object-relational technology, and by Microsoft into OLAP, means that data-access APIs are not in a steady state. Database companies have introduced new APIs for OLAP, for Java programming, for transaction services, and for object-relational extensions such as DataBlades, Data Cartridges, and DB2 Extenders.
In addition to native or proprietary APIs, the major DBMS vendors also support at least one standard API, either a de jure or a de facto standard. In chronological order of their introduction, these APIs are Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), Object Linking and Embedding Database (OLE DB), Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), and ActiveX Data Objects (ADO).
