The product installation directory includes a default file named odbcinst.ini for use with DSN-less connections. This file can be renamed or moved to another location. In either case, the environment variable ODBCINST must be set to point to the fully qualified path name of the .ini file.

For example, to point to the location of the file for an installation on /opt/odbc in the C shell, you would set this variable as follows:

setenv ODBCINST /opt/odbc/odbcinst.ini

In the Bourne or Korn shell, you would set it as:

ODBCINST=/opt/odbc/odbcinst.ini;export ODBCINST

To verify that the ODBCINST environment variable has been set, execute the env command and review the output to confirm.

As an alternative, you can choose to make the odbcinst.ini file a hidden file and not set the ODBCINST variable. In this case, you would need to rename the file to .odbcinst.ini (to make it a hidden file) and move it to the user’s $HOME directory.

The driver searches for the location of the odbcinst.ini file as follows:

  1. The driver checks the ODBCINST variable.
  2. The driver checks $HOME for .odbcinst.ini.

If the driver does not locate the odbcinst.ini file, it returns an error.