The Windows version of DP4 is suppled with an ADC called AUXWODBC, known as the ODBC Gateway. Using this ADC you can access any third party database that supports the ODBC interface as though it were a native DP4 database,once you have created a small DP4 database to describe the data dictionary. (The ADC comes with a utility to simplify this process). This will enable you to use standard DP4 utilities such as QA Build against the database.
For each table in your application, you can specify whether the data is located on the DP4 database or in the foreign database, enabling you to mix and match to achieve best performance. If your application requests information that is on another database system, the auxiliary program redirects the request. The DP4 query is translated into SQL statements, and is sent to the other SQL database system.
This facility, combined with the ODBC interface that allows other ODBC client software to access DP4 databases nmeans that you can use almost any mix of DP4 and non DP4 programs and databases in a system. It should also make it much easier to transfer data between systems.
Specialised replacements for the Gateway ADC are available for accessing Oracle and Sybase databases. These use the native API for these databases, enabling improved performance and use of special facilities.