Schema Functions Supporting Distributed Queries
The SQL Server Native Client ODBC driver provides extended catalog functions that support SQL Server distributed queries.
The catalog functions SQLLinkedCatalogs and SQLLinkedServers list data sources available for distributed query. A linked server is an OLE DB data source. For the ODBC application, the name of the linked server can qualify tables and columns in a query. SQL Server distributes the query as required.
The extended functions are implemented in the SQL Server Native Client ODBC driver. The application developer links with sqlncli10.lib to build an application by using SQLLinkedCatalogs or SQLLinkedServers.
In addition, the SQL Server Native Client ODBC driver supports using several standard ODBC functions to get catalog information for tables or linked servers.