what is odbc/jdbc used for?and when do we have to use them?

what is odbc/jdbc used for?and when do we have to use them?when using a specific database such as sql server,do we have to install and configure odbc/jdbc?

and my other question is why cant thrift/avro/rest/protobuf be used with rdbms,they are services,why are they just used with nosql dbs? I am reading professional nosql book,and there is a list of different nosql db access methods,and they are listed as nosql db access methods,but when I googled them I saw they are services for serializing datas and so on(each of them is for sth).

thanks in advance.