Call Level Interface

The Call Level Interface ( CLI short ) is a database interface specification for accessing relational databases from other applications.

In concrete implementations of the CLI is known as middleware that help can be accessed from any application on any database. Similar to device driver for driving the hardware implementation of the CLI is required for driving of databases. Thus, the programmer of an application must have the functionality to target the database not rewrite for each program, but uses existing modules. The CLI implementation also tracks the instruction sets of various database systems at an ever same function library, so that it is unimportant for the program itself, which database it works. Thus, the CLI has translated into a "language " the function of a translator, the program calls that understands the database and vice versa data that is returned from the database, formatted so that they can be processed by the program.

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

The CLI standard was in early 1990 by a consortium of database vendors - the SQL Access Group - developed 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 is further developed by the X / Open group, which rose even in the consortium The Open Group.