NH> ODBC is a delivery system for sending SQL to databases.
 
 CD> And a _whole_lot_ more!
 NH> Just out of interest born from ignorence (on my part), what are some
 NH> things that can be done using ODBC in a C++ program that couldn't be
 NH> done by the same program if it did its database calls with "straight"
 NH> SQL and the proper precompiler?
It depends on the "precompiler".  You get more from ODBC than just the
ability to execute SQL statements.  With ODBC, you can query not just
the database, but the DBMS as well.  
A lot of the "extra capabilities" from ODBC flow from its design goal
of portability across as many DBMSs as possible.  So it is important
to have, for example, a way to find out the structure of various data
types while the "one DBMS only" approach has no (or very little) need
for this.  
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 þ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12 þ
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