The problem you have to communicate to the monks is your misconception what ODBC is. Essentially you ask for a server for the ODBC network protocol. But there is no such thing. ODBC is like DBI. You need an ODBC-Driver (aka DBD) for your Database to connect to it with ODBC. Happily(?) every(?) Database comes with an ODBC-Driver. It is installed when you install the Database. So you are not aware of this. Your hypothetical MetaDatabase would need its own ODBC-Driver. So essentially the question is: