Generic Standard Database Driver

We are currently setting up a store and forward hub on a Unix box that will use HL7 tcp/ip to pull data off of a proprietary VMS system. We then want to use the hub to feed into an Oracle database running on some platform. However, the problem is that we are not sure we want to always stay with Oracle and if we have the hub programmers use SQL*Net to feed Oracle then we are locked into that product. Instead we would like to feed into some Standard Generic Database driver that has the capabilities of inserting into Sysbase, Informix, or whatever database system we want to run. I see Microsoft has an ODBC driver that can access about every major SQL and non-SQL database I have ever heard. The only problem is that the driver we import into must be strong enough that it will continue to survive and grow and continue to work with the new versions of all the major database vendors. Is ODBC a good driver to use for this task, or is there a better tool to use. The hub will run on a Unix box and the client that will convert the data into an SQL format will be written in C. We just need to decide the driver to write the C client for.

Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

Thanks,
Jeff

-- 
Jeff Hayward
Dept. of Pathology, University of Michigan
(Jeff.Hayward_at_umich.edu)