Choosing a Connection Method

Connection options

Personal Express supports two types of connections to relational databases:

• OCI -- The Direct Oracle Call Interface (OCI) is an application programming interface (API) that allows applications such as Personal Express to issue SQL statements to an Oracle relational database management system (RDBMS). The OCI gives Personal Express the ability to perform the full range of operations that are possible with relational systems such as Oracle7 and Oracle8.

• ODBC -- ODBC is Microsoft's Open Database Connectivity interface. It is a Windows convention for accessing files and databases.

Availability of options

The connection you can use depends on the type of relational database you wish to access.

IF you are accessing . . .	THEN you can use . . .
an Oracle database such as Oracle7 or Oracle8,	OCI or ODBC.
a non-Oracle database,	ODBC only.

For connections to Oracle relational databases, OCI offers substantial benefits over ODBC, because you have access to the special features of Oracle without the restrictions imposed by an ODBC driver. In addition, a direct connection is always faster and more reliable.

Limitations of ODBC

Because the ODBC convention supports only standard SQL, ODBC drivers do not support the nonstandard, special features that might be available in a particular RDBMS. In addition, Express imposes further restrictions with an ODBC connection because of the differences among the various RDBMS. For example, Express does not support multiple-statement transaction processing through an ODBC connection; all changes are committed immediately.