Database APIs: alternative to embedding
Rather than modify compiler, add library with database calls (API)
- special procedures/objects
- passes SQL strings from language, presents result sets in a language-friendly way
- Microsoft’s ODBC becoming C/C++ standard on Windows
- Sun’s JDBC a Java equivalent
- Supposedly DBMS-neutral
- a “driver” traps the calls and translates them into DBMS-specific code
- database can be across a network