Database Terminology

ODBC and JDBC

ODBC and JDBC are industry standard protocols for connecting directly to tables and reporting views in relational databases. It is relatively easy for you or your Database Administrator to connect Omniscope to ODBC/JDBC-compliant databases directly using the Omniscope Database Connection dialogue. 

ODBC - Open Database Connectivity provides a standard software API method for using database management systems (DBMS). The designers of ODBC aimed to make it independent of programming languages, database systems, and operating systems. For more detail, see Wikipedia

JDBC - Java Database Connectivity is an API for the Java programming language that defines how a client may access a database. It provides methods for querying and updating data in a database and is oriented towards relational databases. The Java Platform, Standard Edition includes the JDBC API together with an ODBC implementation of the API enabling connections to any relational database that supports ODBC. For more detail, see Wikipedia

Omniscope can import the results of any SQL statement/query that returns a table using either protocol. Using ODBC it is possible to connect to tables/reporting views drawn from only one database. Using JDBC, it is possible to connect to joined reporting views/tables across multiple databases. In general, JDBC connections perform somewhat better than ODBC.

For examples of how to define and refresh both ODBC and JDBC connections, see Database Connectons