InformationWeek

Object Technology: Will OLE Overtake ODBC?

Forthcoming interface from Microsoft could strand some users

By Katherine Bull
Issue date: May 29, 1995

Microsoft's strategy to convert every piece of its systems architecture to object-based components could be bad news for many of its enterprise customers. The future system, code-named Cairo, would do away with the complicated programming now required to build applications. But while corporate users applaud Microsoft's goal to make it easier for them to access relational a nd nonrelational data, they say the process could be painful.

In particular, Microsoft's intention to turn ODBC, its 10-year-old Open Database Connectivity standard, into components and embed them in OLE DB, a recently announced applications programming interface (API) due out next year, has a number of corporate customers worried about existing ODBC applications.

OLE DB will include an updated ODBC component, as well as business rules that cross different data types, a catalog for libraries, query/update capabilities across data providers, and services for direct access to underlying components. That means Microsoft's support for ODBC may become lukewarm, users say. "Historically, if you don't go along with the Microsoft vision, you find yourself left out in the cold," says one longtime corporate user of Microsoft products.

Difficult Transition
Developing for OLE DB won't be easy for those moving from ODBC, warns Richard Finkelstein, president of Performance Computing, a Chica go consulting firm. "There isn't just one ODBC API out there, because everyone has developed their own. It will be a difficult transition for users."

However difficult it may be, Microsoft is sure that it's on the right track. "OLE DB will become a de facto standard," says David Vaskevitch, chief architect at Microsoft's developer division.

Maybe it's a matter of attitude. "It's not a change in the paradigm, it's an extension of the paradigm," says David Greenberg, chief financial officer of the Orlando Health Care Group in Florida. "ODBC is step one and OLE DB is step two," he says. "If Microsoft users don't know that, they haven't been talking with Microsoft enough."

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