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The Origins of ODBC

The ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) standard was one of the key enablers of the age of client/server Before ODBC, every client application had to implement a different driver for every database that they wanted to access.

 

Wikipedia documents the ODBC history as follows...

ODBC uses as its basis the various Call Level Interface (CLI) specifications from the SQL Access Group, X/Open (now part of The Open Group), and the ISO/IEC. Microsoft, in partnership with Simba Technologies, created ODBC by adapting the SQL Access Group CLI. It released ODBC 1.0 in September 1992. After ODBC 2.0, Microsoft decided to align ODBC 3.0 with the CLI specification making its way through X/Open and ISO. In 1995, SQL/CLI became part of the international SQL standard.

 

It's interesting that it never mention Kyle Geiger, who was the driving force behind ODBC. In fact, without Kyle, ODBC may never have never become a standard. Kyle received a lot of pressure within Microsoft to just propose the db-lib API as a standard. Kyle correctly judged that db-lib was lacking and in addition would be viewed as a heavy-handed effort by Microsoft to dictate standards.

 

Kyle also the pm for ASP and was the creator of OSQL, the ODBC compliant equivalent to the iSQL utility. For more information on the origins of ODBC, read Kyle's book, Inside ODBC.

 

The Origins of ODBC

The Excel team was the product group that initiated the effort that became ODBC. They didn't want to have to have to write a different driver for every supported data source. So it made sense to build one standard API, which at that time within Microsoft was called SQL Connectivity.

 

I became involved in the effort when DEC joined with Microsoft, Lotus and Sybase in the initial meetings over the standard. The team at that time was Bob Muglia (PM, SQL Server), Don Nadel (Lotus), Tom Haggin (Sybase), Jim Steiner and Larry Barnes(DEC).

 

Folks should wonder how Microsoft and Lotus were both involved, let alone in the same room, given they were competitors at this time. The reason was that Microsoft had just signed a deal to distribute Sybase's database product, which would become SQL Server 1.0. Lotus at that time had a 15% ownership stake in Sybase.

 

I was involved because my company, Working Set Inc, developed DEC Rdb's SQL compilers and I was the lead developer for DEC's SQL Services 1.0 database API. 

 

Who would ever guess that ODBC would last this long...that was also my lesson learned. You don't take short cuts with standards, they may stick with you for a long long time.

 

Computer trivia: My name appears in the well known ports file, search on SQL Server and 118 and you'll see the following..

 

sqlserv	118/tcp SQL Services
sqlserv	118/udp SQL Services
#	Larry Barnes

Note: This is a fax from Kyle (6/21/1989) that I just found in my files. It's hard to believe but back then a competing interface from Lotus proposed tree structures instead of a language like SQL.