ODBC is a generic API for accessing a wide range of DBMSs, including Oracle, DB2, Sybase, Ingres, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, Progress, and others. You use the unified interface to access data stored in SQL-based databases and in ODBC-enabled applications, like Excel, which do not require data source processing. Because of the generic nature of the ODBC API, you can use ODBC with TIBCO Object Service Broker as a Gateway to external DBMS data on the Windows platform.
OCI is Oracle’s Call Interface. You can use the Oracle OCI to interact with one or more Oracle servers in performing the full range of database operations such as queries, locking, modification, and transaction handling.
The Gateways are invoked whenever a request to access a table of type SLK is detected by the Data Object Broker. An SLK table maps an external table so that it can be accessed via a Gateway.
The concept of the data source is fundamental to the ODBC approach to generalized data access. Data sources are stored in a repository maintained by the Windows operating system. At login time, TIBCO Service Gateway for ODBC makes use of the data source specified in the SLK table definition to connect to the appropriate DBMS instance. Therefore, a data source name is used for retrieving login information without having to hardcode it within a table definition.
After defining a table in TIBCO Object Service Broker, you can modify the contents of the corresponding data source so that a subsequent request is directed to a different database without altering the table definition. However, this request can be successful only if the external DBMS contains a table mapped by the TIBCO Object Service Broker definition.
The Oracle SID identifies the Oracle server to log on to so you can access Oracle data. It plays the same role for TIBCO Service Gateway for Oracle as ODBC Data Source does for TIBCO Service Gateway for ODBC.