Copyright (C) 1995 Ke Jin [email protected]. Copyright (C) 1996-2022 OpenLink Software [email protected]. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1996-2022 OpenLink Software
This software is released under either the GNU Library General Public License (see LICENSE.LGPL) or the BSD License (see LICENSE.BSD).
Note: The only valid version of the GPL license as far as this project is concerned is the original GNU General Public License Version 2, dated June 1991.
While not mandated by the BSD license, any patches you make to the iODBC project may be contributed back into the project at your discretion. Contributions will benefit the Open Source and Data Access community as a whole. Submissions may be made via the iODBC Github project or via email to [email protected].
Welcome to the iODBC driver manager maintained by OpenLink Software.
This kit will provide you with everything you need to develop ODBC-compliant applications under Unix without having to pay royalties to other parties.
This kit consists of a number of parts:
-
The iODBC driver manager. This is a complete implementation of an ODBC driver manager, released under either the GNU Library General Public License or the BSD License. We fully comply with these licenses by giving you this product in source form (as well as the binary form). You can download the latest version of the driver manager from the iODBC website.
-
A simple example application,
iodbctest.c
, which gives you a command-line interface to SQL. You can fit this to your purposes, but at the very least this is useful for verification of your ODBC installation.
You can use either part stand-alone, if you wish.
An ODBC driver is still needed to affect your connection architecture. You may build a driver with the iODBC components or obtain an ODBC driver from a commercial vendor. OpenLink Software produces cross-platform commercial drivers as well as maintaining the iODBC distribution: evaluation copies may be obtained via download from the OpenLink Software website. Any ODBC-compliant driver will work with the iODBC Driver Manager.
You can see the iODBC website for pointers to various ODBC drivers.
You have probably already unpacked this distribution. The next step is to make sure that your applications can find all the dynamic link libraries. Depending on your system's implementation of dynamic link libraries, you have a number of options:
-
Install the libraries in a directory that is searched by your linker by default. Typical locations are
/usr/lib
and/usr/local/lib
. -
Install the libraries in some other place, and make sure that the environment variable your dynamic linker uses to find extra locations for dynamic link libraries. Most systems use the environment variable
LD_LIBRARY_PATH
to this end. Known exceptions include AIX which usesLIBPATH
, and HP/UX which usesSHLIB_PATH
for 32-bit libraries.
If your system has a C compiler, you can verify the installation by compiling the
iodbctest
program. Otherwise, you may have ODBC applications installed on your
system which you can use.
The iODBC driver manager looks for a file ~/.odbc.ini
, where the tilde stands
for the user's home directory. This file initially contains only a default section
where you can select which driver library to use. Copy the odbc.ini
file from the
examples directory to ~/.odbc.ini
and make sure the right path and filename is
used for your installation.
A data source is a section (enclosed in square brackets), and the attributes for
a data source are given within this section. The most important attribute to
iODBC for each datasource is the Driver
attribute. This must point to the shared
library for the ODBC driver associated with the data source.
For example, the OpenLink Enterprise Edition (Multi-Tier) ODBC drivers have a number of attributes which can be set for a data source. Here is a description:
odbc.ini keyword |
ODBC connect string keyword | Description |
---|---|---|
Host |
HOST |
The hostname where the database resides. |
ServerType |
SVT |
The type of Database Agent. (See oplrqb.ini on the server.) |
ServerOptions |
SVO |
Server-specific extra options. See Enterprise Edition server-side documentation for Agents which can use this. |
Database |
DATABASE |
The database to use. |
Options |
OPTIONS |
Connect options for the database. |
UserName |
UID |
The name of the database user. |
Password |
PWD |
The password of the database user. |
ReadOnly |
READONLY |
A Yes /No value in order to make the connection read-only. |
FetchBufferSize |
FBS |
The number of records that are transferred in a single call to the server. Default is 5 ; maximum is 999 ; minimum is 1 . |
Protocol |
PROTO |
The protocol to use. Set to TCP for Release 3.x and later. |
Apart from these data source-specific settings, you may add a section called
[Communications]
, which you may use to tune the OpenLink Enterprise Edition
(Multi-Tier) driver further:
odbc.ini keyword |
Description |
---|---|
ReceiveTimeout |
The time in seconds that the client application will wait for the Database Agent to start sending results. Default is 60 . |
BrokerTimeout |
The time in seconds that the client application will wait for the Request Broker to accept or reject a database connection request. Default is 30 . |
SendSize |
RPC send buffer size. A value of 0 (the default) will cause the application to use system-dependent defaults. |
ReceiveSize |
RPC receive buffer size. A value of 0 (the default) will cause the application to use system-dependent defaults. |
DebugFile |
If set, the name of a file to which debugging output from the driver should be directed. |
The iODBC driver manager has been ported to following platforms:
OS | Version | Processor |
---|---|---|
BSDi BSD/OS | 2.x | x86 |
DEC Unix (OSF/1) | 3.x - 5.x | DEC Alpha |
DG/UX | 5.x | Aviion |
FreeBSD | 2.x - 9.x | x86 |
HP/UX | 9.x - 11.x | HP9000 s700/s800 |
HP/UX | 9.x | HP9000 s300/s400 |
IBM AIX | 3.x - 5.x | IBM RS6000, ppc32, ppc64 |
Linux ELF | 1.x, 2.x | x86, x86_64, IA_64, ppc32, ppc64, arm32, arm64 |
macOS | 10.x โ 11.x | ppc32, ppc64, x86, x86_64, arm64 |
Max/OS SVR4 | 1.x | Concurrent Maxion 9200 MP |
NCR SVR4 | 3.x | NCR 3435 |
OpenVMS | 6.x | DEC Alpha |
SCO OpenServer | 5.x | x86 |
SGI Irix SVR4 | 5.x, 6.x | IP12 MIPS, IP22 MIPS |
SunOS | 4.1.x | Sun Sparc |
Sun Solaris | 2.x | Sun Sparc, x86, x86_64 |
UnixWare SVR4.2 | 1.x, 2.x | x86 |
Windows NT | 4.x | x86 |
As the iODBC driver manager uses autoconf
/automake
/libtool
, it should be
portable to most modern UNIX-like OS out of the box. However, if you do need to
make changes to the code or the configuration files, we would appreciate it if
you would share your changes with the rest of the internet community by mailing
your patches to [email protected], so we can
include them for the next build.
Porting the iODBC driver manager to some non-UNIX-like operating systems, such
as the Windows family (3.x, 95, NT, 200x, etc.), IBM OS/2, or Mac Classic, is
supported, but has not been compiled or tested recently. Of course, you will need
to supply a make
/build
file and a short LibMain
for creating the iodbc.dll
.
Users of macOS should read the separate README_MACOSX document for more detail of porting to this platform.
Users of all other UNIX-like OS:
- Run
configure
to adjust to target platform - Run
make
- Run
make install
The configure
program will examine your system for various compiler flags,
system options, etc. In some cases, extra flags need to be added for the C
compiler to work properly; for instance, on HP systems, you may need:
$ CFLAGS="-Ae -O" ./configure --prefix=/usr/local ..........
Note that the path of the system wide odbc.ini
file is calculated as follows
(based on flags to ./configure
):
no --prefix default is /etc/odbc.ini
--prefix=/usr /etc/odbc.ini
--prefix=/xxx/yyy /xxx/yyy/etc/odbc.ini
--sysconfdir=/xxx/yyy /xxx/yyy/odbc.ini
--with-iodbc-inidir=/xxx/yyy /xxx/yyy/odbc.ini
If the --with-layout=
option is set, then the prefix
and sysconfdir
parameters will be changed accordingly. Currently, this parameter understands
values of gentoo
, redhat
, gnu
, debian
, or opt
(with everything going into /opt/iodbc/
). If both are specified, --prefix
argument will overrule --with-layout
.
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-iodbc-inidir=/etc
...
...
...
$ make
...
...
...
$ su
# make install
...
...
...
Driver manager and drivers use the odbc.ini
file or connection string when
establishing a data source connection. On Windows, odbc.ini
is located in
the Windows directory.
On UNIX-like OS, the iODBC driver manager looks for the odbc.ini
file in the
following sequence:
-
check environment variable
ODBCINI
-
check
$HOME/.odbc.ini
-
check home in
/etc/passwd
and try.odbc.ini
in there -
system-wide
odbc.ini
(settable at configuration time)
Item 1 is the easiest, as most drivers will also look at this variable.
The format of odbc.ini
(or ~/.odbc.ini
) is defined as:
odbc.ini ::= data_source_list
data_source_list ::= /* empty */
| data_source '\n' data_source_list
data_source ::= '[' data_source_name ']' '\n' data_source_desc
data_source_name ::= 'default' | [A-Za-z]*[A-Za-z0-9_]*
data_source_desc ::= /* empty */
| attrib_desc '\n' data_source_desc
addrib_desc ::= Attrib '=' attrib_value
Attrib ::= 'Driver' | 'PID' | 'UID' | driver_def_attrib
driver_def_attrib ::= [A-Za-z]*[A-Za-z0-9_]*
An example of an odbc.ini
file:
;
; odbc.ini
;
[ODBC Data Sources]
Myodbc = Myodbc
Sample = OpenLink Generic ODBC Driver
Virtuoso = Virtuoso
[ODBC]
TraceFile = /tmp/odbc.trace
Trace = 0 ; set to 1 to enable tracing
[Sample]
Driver = /usr/local/openlink/lib/oplodbc.so.1
Description = Sample OpenLink DSN
Host = localhost
UserName = openlink
Password = xxxx
ServerType = Oracle 8.1.x
Database =
FetchBufferSize = 99
ReadOnly = no
[Virtuoso]
Driver = /usr/local/virtuoso/lib/virtodbc.so.1
Address = localhost:1112
Database = Demo
[Myodbc]
Driver = /usr/lib/libmyodbc.so
HOST = localhost
[Default]
Driver = /usr/local/openlink/lib/oplodbc.so.1
The iODBC driver manager traces driver's ODBC call invoked by the driver manager.
Default tracing file is ./odbc.log
. Tracing option (i.e., on/off or optional
tracing file name) can be set in odbc.ini
file under the [ODBC]
heading, as:
[ODBC]
TraceFile = <optional_trace_file>
Trace = ON | On | on | 1 | OFF | Off | off | 0
If <optional_trace_file>
is stderr
or stdout
, i.e. --
TraceFile = stderr
-- or --
TraceFile = stdout
-- the tracing message will go to the terminal screen (if available).
-
iODBC Website containing binaries, sources and documentation.
-
iODBC Project page on GitHub containing source archives, GIT tree, issues forum.
-
iODBC Project page on Sourceforge containing source archives, GIT tree, mailing lists, forums, bug reports.
-
OpenLink Software Website containing free trials and support for OpenLink's ODBC drivers.
-
Microsoft ODBC Documentation containing the ODBC API Reference Guide.