The Call Level Interface (CLI) is an

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...

(API) and software standard to embed Structured Query Language ( SQL) code in a host program as defined in a joint standard by the

International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Ar ...

(ISO) and

International Electrotechnical Commission The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...

(IEC): ISO/IEC 9075-3:2003. The Call Level Interface defines how a program should send

SQL queries The SQL SELECT statement returns a result set of records, from one or more tables. A SELECT statement retrieves zero or more rows from one or more database tables or database views. In most applications, SELECT is the most commonly used data man ...

to the

database management system In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases span ...

(DBMS) and how the returned recordsets should be handled by the application in a consistent way. Developed in the early 1990s, the API was defined only for the programming languages C and

COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily us ...

. The interface is part of what

The Open Group The Open Group is a global consortium that seeks to "enable the achievement of business objectives" by developing "open, vendor-neutral technology standards and certifications." It has over 840 member organizations and provides a number of servi ...

, publishes in a part of the

X/Open Portability Guide X/Open group (also known as the Open Group for Unix Systems and incorporated in 1987 as X/Open Company, Ltd.) was a consortium founded by several European UNIX systems manufacturers in 1984 to identify and promote open standards in the field of in ...

, termed the Common Application Environment, which is intended to be a wide standard for programming open applications, i.e., applications from different programming teams and different vendors that can interoperate efficiently. SQL/CLI provides an international standard implementation-independent CLI to access SQL databases. Client–server tools can easily access databases through

dynamic-link libraries Dynamic-link library (DLL) is Microsoft's implementation of the shared library concept in the Microsoft Windows and OS/2 operating systems. These libraries usually have the file extension DLL, OCX (for libraries containing ActiveX controls), o ...

(DLL). It supports and encourages a rich set of client–server tools. The most widespread use of the CLI standard is the basis of the Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) specification, which is widely used to allow applications to transparently access database systems from different vendors. The current version of the API, ODBC 3.52, incorporates features from both the ISO and X/Open standards. Examples of languages that support Call Level Interface are ANSI C, C#,

Visual Basic .NET Visual Basic, originally called Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET), is a multi-paradigm, object-oriented programming language, implemented on .NET, Mono, and the .NET Framework. Microsoft launched VB.NET in 2002 as the successor to its original Visua ...

(VB.NET),

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

, Pascal, and Fortran.

History

The work with the Call Level Interface began in a subcommittee of the US-based

SQL Access Group The SQL Access Group (SAG) was a group of software companies that was formed in 1989 to define and promote standards for database portability and interoperability. Initial members were Oracle Corporation, Informix, Ingres, DEC, Tandem, Sun and ...

(SAG) In 1992, it was initially published and marketed as

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

's ODBC API. The CLI specification was submitted as to the ISO and

American National Standards Institute The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organi ...

(ANSI) standards committees in 1993. The standard has the book number and the internal document number is C451. ISO SQL/CLI is an addendum to 1992 SQL standard (

SQL-92 SQL-92 was the third revision of the SQL database query language. Unlike SQL-89, it was a major revision of the standard. Aside from a few minor incompatibilities, the SQL-89 standard is forward-compatible with SQL-92. The standard specificatio ...

). It was completed as ISO standard ISO/IEC 9075-3:1995 Information technology—Database languages—SQL—Part 3: Call-Level Interface (SQL/CLI). The current SQL/CLI effort is adding support for SQL3. In the fourth quarter of 1994, control over the standard was transferred to the

X/Open X/Open group (also known as the Open Group for Unix Systems and incorporated in 1987 as X/Open Company, Ltd.) was a consortium founded by several European UNIX systems manufacturers in 1984 to identify and promote open standards in the field of info ...

Company, which significantly expanded and updated it. The X/Open CLI interface is a superset of the ISO SQL CLI.

References

External links

Online definition of CLI
at

webpage SQL Open Group standards {{database-stub