Overview of Visualizer in an ODBC environment

Inspired by changes in the workplace, BMC's original vision for Visualizer was to bring capacity planning and management reporting tools to the desktop for instant accessibility. You could be sitting at your desk in Portland, Oregon working with databases on servers in Portland, Maine. While the corporate goal might be uniformity of clients and servers, the reality is that you often have to take the most expedient route. More than likely, you work with a mix of databases from different vendors.

What is Microsoft’s Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)?

Microsoft's Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a database-independent application program interface (API). It provides access to multiple relational database management systems (RDBMS). Microsoft ships the ODBC components and the vendor usually ships the ODBC drivers. ODBC satisfies the need for database-independent APIs and database interoperability.

Normally, you do not install an RDBMS on your desktop computer. The RDBMS is generally installed on a designated database server. You access the data remotely, through the ODBC Manager and database drivers. ODBC drivers are available for a number of operating systems. BMC supports the Microsoft drivers for Oracle, SQL Server, and Access platforms and the IBM drivers for UDB. 

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