While all databases have ODBC drivers, they don’t all have OLE DB drivers. You are not restricted to some unsatisfactory lowest common denominator. ADO’s great advantage it that you can use it to manipulate properties which are specific to a given type of data source, just as easily as you can use it to access those properties which apply to all data source types. To overcome this, ADO was designed to be an object-oriented layer on top of OLE DB and to provide a simpler and higher-level – though still very powerful – way of working with it. However, it is procedure-oriented rather than object-oriented and is regarded as a rather difficult interface with which to develop access to data sources. Unlike ODBC it encompasses both table-like and non-table-like data such as email messages, web pages, Word documents and file directories. OLE DB is a Microsoft technology for access to data. Examples are spreadsheets, CSV files and columnar reports. There are also ODBC drivers for objects which, though they are not database tables, are sufficiently similar that accessing data in the same way is useful. Each field has its own data type suitable to the type of data it contains.Įach database vendor (Microsoft, Oracle, Postgres, …) supplies an ODBC driver for their database. It was primarily developed for databases and presents data in collections of records, each of which is grouped into a collection of fields. ODBC is an industry-wide standard interface for accessing table-like data. Specifically regarding SQL Server, Microsoft has promoted both of them as their Preferred Future Direction - though at different times. ODBC and OLE DB are two competing data access technologies. NET APIs build on top of whatever the native transport layer for that data source is (e.g.

Inside Microsoft bubble OLEDB is being phased out in favor of native.

In non-Microsoft world ODBC-based data providers and clients are widely used and not going anywhere. In terms of the features OLEDB is substantially richer than ODBC but suffers from one-ring-to-rule-them-all syndrome (overly generic, overcomplicated, non-opinionated). Also, there exists OLEDB provider (wrapper) for ODBC which allows one to use OLEDB to access ODBC data sources if one so wishes. Now, most Microsoft data sources allow both ODBC and OLEDB access, mainly for compatibility with legacy ODBC data consumers.

Oracle etc.), willing to be compatible with Microsoft data consumers, developed OLEDB providers for their products, but for the most part OLEDB remains a Microsoft-only standard. NET)Īt some point various datasouce vendors (e.g. OLEDB is a technology-specific Microsoft's API from the COM-era (COM was a component and interoperability technology before. ODBC is a technology-agnostic open standard supported by most software vendors. Here's my understanding (non-authoritative):

Microsoft oledb driver for excel