The ODBC Driver Manager manages the communications between the user applications and the ODBC Drivers. Typically, user applications are linked against the ODBC Driver Manager. The Driver Manager manages the job of loading and unloading the appropriate ODBC Driver for the application. Applications make ODBC calls to the ODBC Driver Manager, which performs basic error checking and then processes these calls or passes them on to the underlying ODBC Driver.
The ODBC Driver Manager is not a required component, but it exists to solve many issues surrounding ODBC application development and deployment. Some advantages of using an ODBC Driver Manager are:
Portable data access: Applications do not need to be rebuilt to use a different DBMS.
Runtime binding to a datasource.
Ability to easily change a datasource.
To use the Adaptive Server ODBC Driver without using the ODBC Driver Manager, link your application directly to the Adaptive Server ODBC Driver library. The resulting executable connects only to Adaptive Server datasources.
The Adaptive Server ODBC Driver has been tested with these ODBC Driver Managers:
On Microsoft Windows, the Microsoft ODBC Driver Manager that is included with Microsoft Windows
On Linux, the unixODBC Driver Manager that is included with Red Hat and SuSE
On HP HP-UX, IBM AIX, and Sun Solaris, the unixODBC Driver Manager version 2.2.14 and the Sybase iAnywhere ODBC Driver Manager included with the Adaptive Server ODBC Driver installation
On Apple Mac OS X, the iODBC Driver Manager that is included with Apple Mac OS X
