This manual is organized in the following sections:
Chapter 1 is a general introduction to ODBC and other related concepts. If you are new to ODBC and databases, you should start by reading this section. If you are an experienced database user or developer, you may want to skip this chapter completely.
Chapter 2 contains an introduction to the ODBC architecture. This chapter explains the conceptual models used by ODBC, DBMSs and ODBC conformance levels.
Chapter 3 is a short introduction to the SQL language. If you are new to SQL, this chapter will give you some familiarity with the concepts behind SQL, but it is not intended to replace a complete SQL tutorial. If you are an experienced SQL programmer, you may want to skip this chapter completely.
Chapter 4 explains the fundamentals of ODBC. This chapter includes several code examples that are used in later chapters also. This chapter should be at least browsed by all users.
Chapter 5 explains the basic steps of an ODBC and f90SQL application. It gives some details about how certain f90SQL subroutines work and includes several code examples to introduce Fortran programmers to ODBC and f90SQL. This chapter gives almost all the information you need to build simple Fortran applications with f90SQL.
Chapters 6, 7 and 8 cover some advanced topics in ODBC. Many of these topics are additions to the topics treated in Chapter 5.
Chapter 9 explains how to work with ODBC Diagnostics. Diagnostic information is used at development time to catch programming errors such as invalid handles and syntax errors in hard-coded SQL statements. It is used at run time to catch run-time errors and warnings such as data truncation, access violations, and syntax errors in SQL statements entered by the user.
Chapter 10 explains ODBC catalog functions and some f90SQL subroutines that facilitate their use.
Chapter 11 is a f90SQL reference. This chapter describes each f90SQL subroutine with details about syntax, results, etc., and how they relate to the original Microsoft's ODBC-API 3.5 functions.
Chapter 12 explains how to install the f90SQL library and how to link your programs to it.