In this articleĪ data source is a source of data combined with the connection information that is required to access that data. The procedure steps might vary depending on the specific database products and ODBC drivers used. This article contains general information about ODBC data sources, how to create them, and how to connect to them by using Microsoft Access. Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a protocol that you can use to connect a Microsoft Access database to an external data source such as Microsoft SQL Server.