A black box is a database access program that sits in-between your application programs and the DBMS and is designed so that all application programs call the black box for data instead of writing SQL statements that are embedded into a program, writes Craig S. Mullins in the June e-edition of Database Trends and Applications magazine. While it is intended simplify application development because programmers will not need to know how to write SQL and instead call the black box to request data, according to Mullins, there are reasons why the approach is not sound. To read the article, go here.

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