Connections to a data source can be made via a connection string without referring to a data source name (DSN-less connections). This is done by specifying the "DRIVER=" keyword instead of the "DSN=" keyword in a connection string, as outlined in the ODBC specification. A file named odbcinst.ini must exist when the driver encounters DRIVER= in a connection string.

Setup installs a default version of this file in the product installation directory (see "ODBCINST" for details about relocating and renaming this file). This is a plain text file that contains default DSN-less connection information. You should not normally need to edit this file. The content of this file is divided into several sections.

Note: The driver and driver manager support ASCII and UTF-8 encoding in the odbcinst.ini file.

Refer to Character encoding in the odbc.ini and odbcinst.ini files in Progress DataDirect for ODBC Drivers Reference for details.

At the beginning of the file is a section named [ODBC Drivers] that lists installed drivers, for example,

DataDirect 8.0 PostgreSQL Wire Protocol=Installed

This section also includes additional information for each driver.

The final section of the file is named [ODBC]. The [ODBC] section in the odbcinst.ini file fulfills the same purpose in DSN-less connections as the [ODBC] section in the odbc.ini file does for data source connections. See "Configuration through the system information (odbc.ini) file" for a description of the other keywords this section.

Note: The odbcinst.ini file and the odbc.ini file include an [ODBC] section. If the information in these two sections is not the same, the values in the odbc.ini [ODBC] section override those of the odbcinst.ini [ODBC] section.