The Odbc Solution: Open Database Connectivity in Distributed Environments/Book and Disk (Mcgraw-Hill Series on Computer Communications)

This textbook is designed for use in a college-level computer-science class. As such, The ODBC Solution has the characteristics, both good and bad, of an academic work. On the positive side, this book does a superior job of clearly showing how to open a connection to a database, perform operations upon the database, and close the connection. That is what ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) is all about, after all, and any book that communicates the concepts and procedures involved in ODBC database transactions deserves praise. The authors do a fine job of explaining the ins and outs of the various API (application programming interface) calls, as well as SQL (structured query language) statements and the basics of transaction processing. All the relevant source code (in C) appears on the companion diskette.

Negatively, this book covers only the outmoded ODBC 2.0 API, and the authors fail to say much about networked database applications, particularly as they apply to the Internet and intranets. (There's no coverage of three-layer database architecture, for instance.)

Taken as a whole, The ODBC Solution is appropriate if you're brand-new to ODBC; particularly if you need to work with a legacy system that employs ODBC 2.0.

Customer Review: Everything you need, in one handy package

This hardback text is one of the best database API books that I have in my collection. It is well laid-out and it has examples.

This book is laid out in the order statements are used, with the necessary create and destroy statements together. It starts with connecting to the database, moves to statement execution, and rounds out with retrieving your results. There are of course necessary chapters on creating tables and dealing with transactions.

Each ODBC API call is accompanied with a list of appropriate parameters, return values, and errors.

ODBC Database API's are used in layers:

To Setup: Allocate Environment, Allocate Connection, Connect, ...

To Shutdown, reverse everything: ... Disconnect, Deallocate Connection, Deallocate Environment.

Customer Review: The best book on writing ODBC applications

With the ODBC API you are given a whole lot of notes? But how do you combine those notes to write a symphony? This is the only book on the market which really shows you how. It consists of a detailed ODBC reference and highly useful sample code that shows how to take the API calls and make an application out of them.

The calls are grouped in logical sequences, each call is thoroughly described, and then an example of a program that uses that call (and other calls) is given.

The writing is extremely clear. The presentation is excellent. The book is extremely well organized.

It does not assume any prior knowledge of ODBC though it assumes you know how to program C.

C is the only language used in the book. The use of ODBC in other languages such as Visual Basic is not discussed.

Though this book is old; I cannot recommend it too highly. I've used it before and I'll use it again.
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