what is the difference between OLE DB and ODBC data sources?

ODBC:- Only for relational databases (Sql Server, Oracle etc)

OLE DB:- For both relational and non-relational databases. (Oracle, Sql-Server, Excel, raw files, etc)


According to ADO: ActiveX Data Objects, a book by Jason T. Roff, published by O'Reilly Media in 2001 (excellent diagram here), he says precisely what MOZILLA said.

(directly from page 7 of that book)

  • ODBC provides access only to relational databases
  • OLE DB provides the following features
  • Access to data regardless of its format or location
  • Full access to ODBC data sources and ODBC drivers

So it would seem that OLE DB interacts with SQL-based datasources THRU the ODBC driver layer.

alt text

I'm not 100% sure this image is correct. The two connections I'm not certain about are ADO.NET thru ADO C-api, and OLE DB thru ODBC to SQL-based data source (because in this diagram the author doesn't put OLE DB's access thru ODBC, which I believe is a mistake).

Tags:

Odbc

Oledb

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