Call level interface

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The Call Level Interface ( CLI ) is a database interfaces - Specification for accessing relational databases from other applications.

Concrete implementations of the CLI are so-called middleware , with the help of which any database can be accessed from any application . Similar to device drivers for controlling the hardware , the CLI implementation is required for controlling databases. This means that the programmer of an application does not have to rewrite the functional scope for addressing the database for each program , but rather uses existing modules . The CLI implementation also maps the command sets from different database systems to a function library that is always the same , so that it is not important for the program which database it works with. The CLI has the function of a translator, which translates program calls into a “language” that the database understands and, conversely, formats data returned by the database in such a way that it can be processed by the program.

Well-known programming interfaces that implement the CLI concept are Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) and Java Database Connectivity (JDBC).

The CLI standard was developed in early 1990 by a consortium of database manufacturers - the SQL Access Group  - and implemented for the first time in 1992 with Microsoft's ODBC. The ISO - and ANSI standardization followed in 1993. Since the end of 1994, the CLI standard of the X / Open group developed, which even in the consortium The Open Group came up.

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