iODBC is an open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 initiative managed by OpenLink Software. It is a platform-independent ODBC

Open Database Connectivity

In computing, ODBC is a standard C interface for accessing database management systems . The designers of ODBC aimed to make it independent of database systems and operating systems...

 SDK

Software development kit

A software development kit is typically a set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform.It may be something as simple...

 and runtime offering that enables the development of ODBC-compliant applications and drivers outside the Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 platform. The prime goals of this project are as follows:

• Simplify the effort of porting ODBC applications from Windows to other platforms
• Simplify the effort of porting ODBC drivers from Windows to other platforms
• Create consistent ODBC-utilization experience across all platforms

History

iODBC emerged from a cooperative effort between OpenLink Software and Ke Jin. OpenLink Software produced a Driver Manager-less ODBC SDK that it branded as Universal DataBase Connectivity (UDBC

UDBC

UDBC may refer to:*Open Database Connectivity*United Districts Basketball Club...

) in 1993, because of the sporadic nature of shared library implementations across Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 platforms. Ke Jin used UDBC as inspiration for building a Driver Manager for ODBC outside the windows platform.

Over time Ke Jin and OpenLink Software decided to merge this effort into a single Open Source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 offering under the LGPL license.

This process occurred at a time when the Free Software Foundation

Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...

 sought to have iODBC as a GPL

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

 offering. The delay in determining final licensing status for iODBC led to the emergence of UnixODBC

UnixODBC

unixODBC is an open source project that implements the ODBC API. The code is provided under the GNU GPL/LGPL license and can be built and used on many different operating systems, including most versions of Unix, Linux, Mac OS X, IBM OS/2 and Microsoft's Interix.The goals of the project...

 and led to a fork

Fork (software development)

In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...

in the platform-independent ODBC SDK and runtime that exists today. Drivers and applications written using either SDK have remained compatible (a tribute to both projects).