ODBC driver manager tasks

The driver manager handles a number of tasks that all ODBC applications need, regardless of the particular ODBC driver that they use or the data source that they access.

These tasks include the following ones:

• Loading into memory the ODBC driver that is required by the application and the data source that it accesses.
• Unloading from memory ODBC drivers when they are no longer needed.
• Passing ODBC API function calls from the application to an appropriate ODBC driver.
• Performing any required ODBC API function call conversions. For example, if an ODBC application issues ODBC 2.5 function calls and is using an ODBC 3.0 driver, the driver manager converts ODBC 2.5 function calls to their ODBC 3.0 equivalents when necessary.
• Performing error checking and validation on ODBC API function calls before passing them to the ODBC driver.
• Performing some character set conversions. For example, if the application uses an 8-bit ASCII character set and the ODBC driver and DBMS work with character data in 16-bit Unicode format, the driver manager does the necessary character conversions.