{{Portal, Free and open-source software unixODBC is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

project that implements the

ODBC In computing, Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard application programming interface (API) for accessing database management systems (DBMS). The designers of ODBC aimed to make it independent of database systems and operating systems. An ...

API 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 (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

. The code is provided under the

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LGPL The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

and can be built and used on many different operating systems, including most versions of

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

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Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

, IBM

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 ...

and Microsoft's

Interix Interix was an optional, POSIX-conformant Unix subsystem for Windows NT operating systems. Interix was a component of Windows Services for UNIX, and a superset of the Microsoft POSIX subsystem. Like the POSIX subsystem, Interix was an environment ...

. The goals of the project include: *Provide developers with the tools to port

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

ODBC applications to other platforms with the minimum of code changes. *Maintain the project as a vendor neutral interface database SDK *Provide people who write ODBC drivers the tools to port their drivers to non Windows platforms *Provide the user with a set of GUI and command line tools for managing their database access *Maintain links with both the

free software community The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run the software, to study the software, to modify the software, and to share copies of the ...

and commercial database vendors, to ensure interoperability

History

1999

The unixODBC project was first started in the early months of 1999 (by Peter Harvey) and was created as at that time the developers of

iODBC iODBC is an open-source initiative managed by OpenLink Software. It is a platform-independent ODBC SDK and runtime offering that enables the development of ODBC-compliant applications and drivers outside the Windows platform. The prime goals of ...

(another open source

implementation) were not then willing to LGPL the code, expand the API to include the current ODBC 3 API specification, and did not consider the addition of GUI based configuration tools worthwhile. iODBC now has these parts added, and applications that use the ODBC interface may use both iODBC and unixODBC, without change in most cases, as a result of both projects adhering to the single ODBC specification.

1999 July

The original driver manager was very basic. The driver manager was rewritten b
Easysoft's
Nick Gorham soon after the project started. Nick assumed leadership of the project in July 1999 with Peter Harvey continuing work on supporting code. The development of unixODBC progressed since its origin, with contributions from many developers, both in the open source community and also from commercial database companies, including IBM,

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

and

SAP Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a separa ...

. It is included as part of the standard installation of many Linux distributions.

2009

The unixODBC project was split into several projects (all hosted on SourceForge);
unixODBC
("Core" and "Dev" bits)
unixODBC-GUI-Qt
(Qt based GUI bits)
unixODBC-Test
(multiple test frameworks) This split was done to allow faster releases of supporting work while maintaining focus on stability and consistency for the core code.

External links

unixODBC homepage

UnixODBC & MySQL Sample Program
Database APIs SQL data access