Database applications and the database server work together to manage databases.
Any information system contains the following pieces:
A database - data is stored in a database.
Database server - manages the database. No other applications address the database file directly; they all communicate with the database server.
Language interface - applications communicate with the database server using an interface. You can use ODBC, JDBC, Sybase Open Client, or Embedded SQL.
The language interface provides a set of function calls available to client applications for communicating with the database. For ODBC and JDBC, the library is commonly called a driver. The interface is typically provided as a shared library on UNIX operating systems or a dynamic link library (DLL) on Windows operating systems. The JDBC interface uses the Sybase jConnect driver, which is a zip file of compiled Java classes.
If you are working with a Sybase IQ network server, the language interface resides on the client computer.
Client applications - use one of the language interfaces to communicate with the database server.
If you develop an application using a rapid application development (RAD) tool such as one of the Sybase Enterprise Application Studio™ tools, you may find that the tool provides its own methods for communicating with database servers, and hides the details of the language interface. Nevertheless, all applications do use one of the supported language interfaces.