Disclaimer: info. for this page was sourced from here
- ODBC is an API for accessing database systems, which is often referred to as drivers
- Each database will have its own driver - it is not dependent upon the application
- ODBC allows for language agnostic connections to a database
- This means the vendor only needs to develop a single driver that will allow all types of connections
- Sometimes you will need to install other packages like pyodbc to interface with that driver depending on the language so you do not have to reinvent the wheel
- More often than not you need to install the driver from the vendor site
- It is very important that you install the 32 or 64 bit version, depending on the application interfacing with the driver (Python, R...) and not the entire system itself