Editing Open Database Connectivity (section)

===SAG and CLI===
In 1988 several vendors, mostly from the [[Unix]] and database communities, formed the [[SQL Access Group]] (SAG) in an effort to produce a single basic standard for the SQL language. At the first meeting there was considerable debate over whether or not the effort should work solely on the SQL language itself, or attempt a wider standardization which included a dynamic SQL language-embedding system as well, what they called a [[Call Level Interface]] (CLI).{{sfn|Geiger|1995|p=165}} While attending the meeting with an early draft of what was then still known as MS Data Access, Kyle Geiger of Microsoft invited Jeff Balboni and Larry Barnes of [[Digital Equipment Corporation]] (DEC) to join the SQLC meetings as well. SQLC was a potential solution to the call for the CLI, which was being led by DEC.

The new SQLC "gang of four", MS, Tandem, DEC and Sybase, brought an updated version of SQLC to the next SAG meeting in June 1990.{{sfn|Geiger|1995|p=186-187}} The SAG responded by opening the standard effort to any competing design, but of the many proposals, only [[Oracle Corp]] had a system that presented serious competition. In the end, SQLC won the votes and became the draft standard, but only after large portions of the API were removed – the standards document was trimmed from 120 pages to 50 during this time. It was also during this period that the name Call Level Interface was formally adopted.{{sfn|Geiger|1995|p=186-187}}  In 1995 SQL/CLI became part of the international SQL standard, ISO/IEC 9075-3.<ref name="ISO/IEC 9075-3">ISO/IEC 9075-3 – Information technology – Database languages – SQL – Part 3: Call-Level Interface (SQL/CLI)</ref> The SAG itself was taken over by the [[X/Open]] group in 1996, and, over time, became part of [[The Open Group]]'s [[Common Application Environment]].

MS continued working with the original SQLC standard, retaining many of the advanced features that were removed from the CLI version. These included features like [[Cursor (databases)#Scrollable cursors|scrollable cursors]], and [[metadata]] information queries. The commands in the API were split into groups; the Core group was identical to the CLI, the Level 1 extensions were commands that would be easy to implement in drivers, while Level 2 commands contained the more advanced features like cursors. A proposed standard was released in December 1991, and industry input was gathered and worked into the system through 1992, resulting in yet another name change to ''ODBC''.{{sfn|Geiger|1995|p=203}}