GNU Data Access (GDA) is an attempt to provide uniform access to 
different kinds of data sources (databases, information servers,
mail spools, etc).

It is a complete architecture that provides all you need to access
your data, defined by a set of CORBA interfaces as generic as possible
(but very powerful at the same time) so that any kind of data source
can be accessed through them.

libgda is an interface to the GDA architecture, providing a nice
wrapper around the CORBA interfaces, for both the client and the server
parts. It also provides a bunch of tools to help you both in the
development and management of your data sources, all done through
the GDA model's set of CORBA interfaces.

libgda was part of the GNOME-DB project, but has been separated from it
to allow non-GNOME applications to be developed based on it.

WWW: http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnome-db/