As with dynamic parameters, ODBC applications must bind the fetched data to variables in the ODBC application. Data can be fetched one row at a time, or the application can declare an array to serve as a record set.

It is not necessary for the type of variable to be similar to the type of column in the DBMS. For instance, one can read a table containing an integer and bind it to a character string. The ODBC performs the conversion internally.