The Workspace object represents an ODBCDirect workspace. The Workspaces collection contains the set of all active ODBCDirect workspaces. The following table shows the relationship between the Workspace object and the Workspaces collection and other objects and collections in an ODBCDirect workspace.
| Object or collection | Is contained by | Contains |
| Workspace object | Workspaces collection | Connections collection |
| Databases collection | ||
| Properties collection | ||
| Workspaces collection | DBEngine object | Workspace objects |
The first step in using ODBCDirect is to create an ODBCDirect workspace with the CreateWorkspace method. The ODBCDirect workspace routes calls directly to the ODBC application programming interface (API), as opposed to the Microsoft Jet workspace, which first routes calls to the Microsoft Jet database engine, and then to the ODBC API when you’re using ODBC.