ODBC is short hand for Open  Database Connectivity. It is the standard software Application Program interface (API) method for using Database management system (DBMS). It was designed in an intent to be a language, database and operating system  independent.

ODBC Architecture:

This architecture comprises of four main components:

Application programming Interface (API): This layer is responsible for calling ODBC functions to a datasource, send, receive and disconnect.

Driver Manager: This  layer is responsible for providing the information to an application, dynamically loading of driver as needed. State transition checking is also provided.

Driver: It process the ODBC functions call and is responsible for managing all the exchanges between application and a relational Database. It may also translate the standard SQL statements to native SQL of the target data source.

Data Source : This consist the main data and the database engine.

Using this architecture means is that you can access different ODBC data sources from different locations, using the same function call available in ODBC API.

Advantages of ODBC:

1. It is Well integrated with RAD tools
2. It speeds up the application development process and also simplifies it.
3. It interfaces easily with data bound components in development environments for eg java, VB etc.
4. It allows more than one concurrent connections

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As we know that the PHP is the most common and loved web language world wide. PHPMyAdmin is also written in PHP as the name itself suggests. It is an open source tool which is used for administer MySQL over the web. It can perform all the tasks on the database such as creating, modifying or deleting the tables, databases, columns, rows and a single field also. It executes the SQL statements and manages the user permissions.

Currently this tool is available in 57 language and is maintained by the The PHPMyAdmin. There are more similar products available which include PostgreSQL, PHPMSAdmin also. Although the variety of the tools are available PHPMyAdmin is widely used and appreciated by the people. It has won several awards. It was chosen as the best PHP application in many of the awards.

Take a look at the features:

1. spontaneous Web Interface

2. It supports almost all MySQL features.

Browse and drop the databases, fields, views, indexes.

Create the databases, copy, rename.

Alter the databases, fields, views, tables, indexes

Maintain the server databases and tables

Executing the SQL statements and bookmark it, edit and even batch     queries

Manage the Users and the permissions.

It also manages the stored procedures and the triggers.

It has a support to import the data from SQL and CSV.

3. Support for exporting data to various formats i.e. SQL,CSV,XML, OpenDocument Text and Spreadsheet.

4. It export the data in normal Word, Excel also.

5. Ability to Administer multiple servers.

6. The database layout can be transformed into PDF graphics.

7. Complex Queries are created by the use of Query by Example(QBE)

8. Ability to search globally or a subset of the database.

9. It can transform the stored data into any format using the predefined functions.

10. Taking back ups of the databases.

The features listed above are just the key of them, you can explore more of them by using PHPmyAdmin

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