Visual C++ 6 Unleashed

By MICKEY WILLIAMS and David Bennett

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Authors
  • About the Contributors
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • How to Use This Book
  • What You Need to Use This Book
  • What's New in Visual C++ 6.0
  • Contacting the Main Author
  • Part I: Introduction
  • Chapter 1. The Visual C++ 6.0 Environment
  • Part II: MFC Programming
  • Chapter 2. MFC Class Library Overview
  • Chapter 3. MFC Message Handling Mechanism
  • Chapter 4. The Document View Architecture
  • Chapter 5. Creating and Using Dialog Boxes
  • Chapter 6. Working with Device Contexts and GDI Objects
  • Chapter 7. Creating and Using Property Sheets
  • Chapter 8. Working with the File System
  • Chapter 9. Using Serialization with File and Archive Objects
  • Part III: Internet Programming with MFC
  • Chapter 10. MFC and the Internet Server API (ISAPI)
  • Chapter 11. The WinInet API
  • Chapter 12. MFC HTML Support
  • Part IV: Advanced Programming Topics
  • Chapter 13. Using the Standard C++ Library
  • Chapter 14. Error Detection and Exception Handling Techniques
  • Chapter 15. Debugging and Profiling Strategies
  • Chapter 16. Multithreading
  • Chapter 17. Using Scripting and Other Tools to Automate the Visual C++ IDE
  • Part V: Database Programming
  • Chapter 18. Creating Custom AppWizards
  • Chapter 19. Database Overview
    • ODBC 4.0
    • OLE DB and ATL's Database Classes
    • ActiveX Data Objects (ADO)
    • MFC's Database Classes
    • Structured Query Language
    • Data Definition Language
    • Data Control Language
    • Data Manipulation Language
    • Summary
  • Chapter 20. ODBC Programming
  • Chapter 21. MFC Database Classes
  • Chapter 22. Using OLE DB
  • Chapter 23. Programming with ADO
  • Part VI: MFC Support for COM and ActiveX
  • Chapter 24. Overview of COM and Active Technologies
  • Chapter 25. Active Documents
  • Chapter 26. Active Containers
  • Chapter 27. Active Servers
  • Chapter 28. ActiveX Controls
  • Part VII: Using the Active Template Library
  • Chapter 29. ATL Architecture
  • Chapter 30. Creating COM Objects Using ATL
  • Chapter 31. Creating ActiveX Controls Using ATL
  • Chapter 32. Using ATL to Create MTS and COM+ Components
  • Part VIII: Finishing Touches
  • Chapter 33. Adding Windows Help
  • Part IX: Appendix

ODBC 4.0

The Open Database Connectivity, or ODBC, API is perhaps the most widely used database interface for windows applications today. ODBC provides a standard interface to a wide range of different sorts of data sources, ranging from simple text files to full-blown database server systems.

ODBC allows access to database features available in a common API, which can greatly simplify database application development if you plan to support a number of different databases. Instead of having to add special code for the proprietary interface used for each database, you can simply code for the ODBC API. Special ODBC drivers provide any necessary translation between the ODBC API and the proprietary interface used to actually communicate with the database.

You should note, however, that there are many features that can differ significantly from one ODBC driver to another. Thus, although ODBC takes a big step in the right direction toward standard database access, you might find that you will need to add some code to your applications that must do things a bit differently for different database types.

Chapter 20, "ODBC Programming" takes a look at the latest version of ODBC, ODBC 4.0. The ODBC 4.0 C API is best suited for C or C++ applications that need to have fairly direct control of a complete set of features on a wide number of different databases. If you are building MFC applications, it might be simpler to use the MFC database classes, although these generalized classes don't give you as much control of your database interactions as ODBC does. In fact, you might often need to use some native ODBC calls in conjunction with the MFC database classes to perform some types of operations.

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