OLE DB (
Object Linking and Embedding, Database, sometimes written as
OLEDB or
OLE-DB), an
API designed by
Microsoft, allows accessing
data from a variety of sources in a uniform manner. The API provides a set of interfaces implemented using the
Component Object Model (COM); it is otherwise unrelated to
OLE. Microsoft originally intended OLE DB as a higher-level replacement for, and successor to,
ODBC, extending its feature set to support a wider variety of non-relational databases, such as
object databases and
spreadsheets that do not necessarily implement
SQL.