What is ODS?

Open Data Services is the piece of software (a DLL) which links the network with the SQL Server or the Data Distributor. It gives the SQL Server its personality by responding to DB-Library calls sent from clients throughout the network. ODS has the ability to accept requests from four different network types simultaneously. ODS parses and does some error checking on incoming Transact SQL language requests before passing them to the backend engine (SQL Server or Data Distributor).