The product installation directory includes a default system information file, named odbc.ini. This file can be renamed or moved to another location. In either case, the environment variable ODBCINI must be set to point to the fully qualified path name of the .ini file that you want to use for data source configuration.

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 ODBCINI /opt/odbc/odbc.ini

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

ODBCINI=/opt/odbc/odbc.ini;export ODBCINI

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

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

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

  1. The driver checks the ODBCINI variable.
  2. The driver checks $HOME for .odbc.ini.

If the driver does not locate the system information file, it returns an error.