How to set up an ODBC connection?

Answer

In order to set up an ODBC connection, you must specify four things:

• The name of the data source(DSN).
• The driver used to access the data (e.g SQLServer).
• The type of registration(per user/per machine).
• The attributes of the connection: these include all the information required to access the data and are specific for each driver. They are given in the form "name=value".

The ODBC API takes these attributes in a generic way (in a string containing pairs "name=value"), so Windows Installer has no other way and neither does Advanced Installer.