Branded drivers work with ODBC-enabled applications that implement special calls to the OEM driver license file. ODBC-enabled applications may be developed using tools such as:

  • ODBC Software Developer’s Kit (SDK)
  • Microsoft Visual Basic or other development tools that hide the ODBC interface (Windows platforms only)
  • C++ ODBC Wrappers
  • OLE DB Software Developer’s Kit (SDK) and ADO

Using an appropriate development tool, you must unlock the branded drivers while establishing a connection. The method you use to unlock the drivers from your application depends on whether your development environment permits direct ODBC API calls. If it does, you can unlock the drivers using special parameters in the ODBC connection string. If you use Visual Basic or other development tools that hide the ODBC interface, you will need to use another method. This chapter describes the available methods and provides examples.

If your application is not coded to unlock the branded drivers or if another application tries to use your drivers, warning or error messages are generated by the license control feature. These messages are described in the next section.

Note: In all of the following code examples, xx refers to the two characters specified during branding of the drivers and nn refers to the release level of the drivers.