The Marriage of DBI and ODBC
The
DBI has been strongly influenced by ODBC
and the international standards that lie behind it (X/Open SQL CLI
and ISO/IEC 9075-3:1995 SQL/CLI). The development of the
DBD::ODBC module has given the DBI a more solid
footing in the world of ODBC.
The DBI specification naturally evolves over time. The ODBC standard
gives it a standards-based framework to build around. So, for
example, if a method to return information about the datatypes
supported by a database needs to be added, then following the proven
standard function that makes much more sense than defining a new way.
Thus, the DBI type_info method is modeled very
closely on the GetTypeInfo ODBC function.
As the DBI and DBD::ODBC modules evolve,
they’ll naturally move closer together. As there are two
excellent portable Open Source driver managers available,[64] the DBD::ODBC module should become as
portable as DBI itself. At that point, it may well make sense to
combine the two.
[64] It’s available from the FreeODBC project at: http://users.ids.net/~bjepson/FreeODBC/.
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