OLE DB is Microsoft’s strategic system-level programming interface to data across the organization. OLE DB is an open specification designed to build on the success of ODBC by providing an open standard for accessing all kinds of data. Whereas ODBC was created to access relational databases, OLE DB is designed for relational and nonrelational information sources, including mainframe ISAM/VSAM and hierarchical databases; e-mail and file system stores; text, graphical and geographical data; custom business objects; and more.
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Performance Advantages Over ODBC
While ODBC has been a very important and successful data access standard, OLE DB has an improved architecture that provides a significant performance advantage over ODBC. ODBC providers no longer have to implement a SQL relational engine to expose data. With ODBC, services such as cursoring and query processing need to be implemented by every ODBC driver writer. This represents overhead both for the ODBC driver author, as well as for the end user (how many cursor engines and query processors do you need on one machine?). With OLE DB, reusable service components handle the processing chores for a variety of data providers. OLE DB simplifies the process of writing data providers, which means they should come online faster and be of a higher quality; it also reduces the number of components installed on data consumer machines.
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