ODBC is a core component of Microsoft Windows Open Services Architecture (WOSA). It’s Microsoft’s strategic interface for accessing data in a heterogeneous environment of relational and nonrelational database management systems. It’s based on the Call Level Interface specification of the SQL Access Group and provides an open, vendor-neutral way of accessing data stored in a variety of proprietary personal computer, minicomputer, and mainframe databases. This means independent software vendors and corporate developers don’t have to learn multiple APIs because ODBC provides a universal data access interface. With ODBC, application developers can allow an application to concurrently access, view, and modify data from multiple, diverse databases.