Yes, ODBC is a MS standard, but today it is pretty much an insdustry standard and works with non-MS platforms as well.
Also while ODBC performance was really bad few years ago it is better today

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>Keep in mind that ODBC is a Microsoft standard. Many back ends work much better with their companies' native drivers than with ODBC. In fact, a few years ago even SQL Server worked much slower with ODBC than with native access.