Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) Arrives for Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch

Sept. 17, 2010 - PRLog -- ODBCrouter.com: US-based enterprise software developer August Software today released its much anticipated Open Data Base Connectivity (ODBC) Software Development Kit (SDK) for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch extending the Apple iOS platform with industry standard database APIs. The new ODBC SDK for Apple iOS enables apps on Apple mobile devices to compete with similar JDBC functionality present in the Google Android platform to connect live with enterprise data sources on Windows, Linux, IBM iSeries or AS/400, Unix, NetWare, DOS and legacy mainframes. Supported backend database systems on those platforms include most revisions of MySQL, QuickBooks Pro, DB/2, MYOB, Empress, Oracle, SQL Server, MS Access, Excel, Navision, Firebird, Pervasive, Sybase, Pick, Informix, Ingres and SQLite among thousands of others. Available now, the new ODBC SDK for Apple iOS is included free with the new iPhone-compatible editions of August Software's server-based ODBC driver solution at ODBCrouter.com Starting at under US$1,200 complete, a companion ODBC Router iPhone Edition supporting an unrestricted number of concurrent database sessions from iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac, Linux and Windows is available online with electronic delivery and instant discounts for non-profit organizations and institutions of public health or education.

Screenshots (from http://ODBCrouter.com/ipad)

Product Technical Details

ODBC SDK for Apple iOS consists of ARM and i386 format object-code libraries and "open source" ODBC header-files for incorporation and redistribution with any Apple XCode-based iOS 3.1.2 or later compatible App on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch or simulator environment, as well as the complete project source for "odbcApp" a sample iPhone App written by August Software to demonstrate the use of industry standard ODBC database APIs in Apple's unique Cocoa Touch environment. ODBC SDK for Apple iOS is recommended for use by developers taking advantage of the free enterprise-grade VPN and WiFi security features included in Apple's mobile devices, or by apps that otherwise login to their data sources using device tokens and do not require mobile data encryption (e.g., "games" "social boards" etc.) The runtime components of ODBC SDK for Apple iOS are provided royalty-free for redistribution with retail or enterprise database Apps and add approximately 563K to the footprint of those apps.

Analysis: Web Services vs. ODBC

Through the use of the new ODBC SDK for Apple iOS, mobile apps may now directly interact with their network data source simply by passing standard SQL queries and stored procedure invocations via industry standard ODBC programming calls that return binary data just they do on Windows, Mac and Linux, without maintaining an intervening high-overhead "web service." Previous to this development, due in large part to iPhone's web-oriented beginnings, App developers had traditionally hardcoded such network data source interactions in a variety of custom (not industry standard) formats to run against separately coded "web services." These "web services" really "mini websites" in their own right, were typically developed in memory and CPU intensive (high-overhead) "interpreted environments" such as Ruby or PHP, well outside of the scope of Apple's powerful XCode environment, detracting from the main focus of the mobile App development experience and requiring even small developers to cultivate often vast server-side infrastructures. The resulting concoction of intermingled custom client-side and server-side code jeopardized the application lifecycle while burdening networks and mobile CPUs with bandwidth inefficient, battery-draining non-binary data formats such as JSON and XML. Such issues developed in sharp contrast to Google's Android platform that benefitted greatly from its Java underpinnings, including JDBC, the Java-based alternative to ODBC. This is further demonstrated in practice through Apple's selection of a highly efficient binary-interface to maintain reliability, backwards compatibility and scalability in its own Push Notification Services. Today's ODBC SDK for Apple iOS release all but eliminates the need for such web services in most enterprise-grade and ad-hoc retail Apps.

Analysis: "Open" Database API

Significantly, elimination of web services and their high- overhead interpreted languages also removes the incentive those environments provided to lock apps into specific revisions of certain databases by hard-coding to proprietary programming interfaces typically associated with so-called "open source" databases, such as those of MySQL which faces a "new future" (along side Java itself) under "new ownership" by its largest for-profit competitor. Through the use of "Open" Data Base Connectivity programming interfaces, the user's preferred database system may not necessarily even be known ahead of time by the app developer and is typically only selected during deployment, much like a printer, and is easily changed without source code modifications through the simple ODBC control panel installed on the ODBC network's centralized Windows PC (or VM).

About ODBC Router

ODBC Router is software that leverages a standard Microsoft Windows instance on a customer's network as an "appliance" for routing ODBC database sessions originating from networks of iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Macintosh, Linux and Windows, thereby eliminating the need to install database-specific drivers on every machine in a customer's network or resorting to poorly supported non-Windows ODBC drivers, proprietary database programming interfaces, virtual machines or inefficient and difficult to maintain JSON and XML marshalling strategies. First delivered in the mid-1990s, ODBC Router is now in use around the globe by Fortune 100 companies, governments and startups alike.

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ODBC Router and August Software are trademarks of AugSoft LLC. All other product and/or technology names, including Apple, IBM and Oracle, are the intellectual property or marks of their respective holders and are used for their benefit and without intent to infringe.

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About August Software

Celebrating 20 years of enterprise software innovation, privately held, US-based, August Software was founded by senior personnel from the world's second largest computer company who are credited with developing the world's first modern client/server system, tying millions of dollars worth of Macs into SQL databases in support of a diverse range of applications ranging from healthcare IT to the first international space station.