Sample TimesTen ODBC Driver Manager

TimesTen ODBC Driver Manager (TTDM) is a lightweight ODBC Driver Manager specifically developed and optimized for use with the Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database.

What is a Driver Manager and why might I need it?

When an ODBC based application connects to a TimesTen database, it connects to a logical name, the Data Source Name (DSN), which identifies the datasource to which it wants to connect. It does this by calling various ODBC functions provided by an ODBC driver. Some external repository of configuration information holds the various DSN values that are available, together with the necessary configuration and control information needed by the ODBC driver to establish a connection and manage usage of the datasource.

An ODBC driver is a piece of software (typically a library of some kind) that implements the ODBC API and provides the functionality to connect to a specific kind of datasource. For example, there are ODBC drivers available for most popular databases; Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase, DB2 etc. etc. Each type of database (datasource) requires a different ODBC driver. Herein lies a potential problem.

Since each ODBC library defines and exposes (largely) the same set of functions (those defined in the ODBC API), an application can only be linked with one ODBC driver library at any one time. This means that if the application has to support different kinds of datasource, different versions of the application must be built for each type of datasource. If the application needs to connect concurrently to different types of datasource (i.e. needs to concurrently use more than one ODBC driver) then this becomes impossible.

A solution to this issue is to use a Driver Manager. A driver manager itself implements and exposes the ODBC API , thus the application can link directly to the driver manager library instead of the individual ODBC Driver libraries. Based on some configuration data or other mechanism, the driver manager will dynamically load the relevant ODBC Driver libraries at runtime as the application requires them. The driver manager sits between the application and the individual ODBC drivers and arbitrates all ODBC calls. The application can now connect to multiple datasources, using different ODBC drivers, concurrently

TTDM Functionality

TTDM enables an application to concurrently use both the direct-linked mode and the client/server mode to connect to the TimesTen database. TTDM dynamically determines the correct connection type based on the DSN that is being used for a connection.

-	TTDM User's Guide
-	TTDM Source ttdrvmgr.c

NOTE: TTDM is provided as is with source code. Oracle is not responsible for supporting any user modifications to the sample driver manager.