Revised June 2025
To define a data source under Windows, use the ODBC Data Sources Manager, most easily located by entering "Data Source" or "ODBC" into your browser's search bar. Make sure to select the 32 or 64 bit version to match the A-Shell/Windows architecture (32 bit as of June 2025). Essentially you need to choose a driver (e.g. SQL Server, Access, etc.) and then customize the configuration, typically by specifying a database and perhaps a user and password, in which case you would not need to supply that information when connecting. The name which you assign to the data source will be the name you specify in the “-host=” argument of the SQLOP_CONNECT call.
Under Linux, you’ll probably need to install the ODBC package (see Installing ODBC) and then configure it either using the GUI tool ODBCConfig, or by manually editing the /etc/odbcinst.ini and /etc/odbc.ini files. The MySQL ODBC connector installation will set up its entry in /etc/odbcinst.ini for you, so that’s a good place to start. You’ll probably need to consult the documentation for the connector to get the details needed for the /etc/odbc.ini entries.
Example
As a non-definitive example, here are the contents of ini files from a working Ubantu 24 system:
/etc/odbcinst.ini
[ODBC Driver 18 for SQL Server]
Description=Microsoft ODBC Driver 18 for SQL Server
Driver=/opt/microsoft/msodbcsql18/lib64/libmsodbcsql-18.4.so.1.1
UsageCount=1
/etc/odbc.ini
[TESTEXPRESS]
Driver=ODBC Driver 18 for SQL Server
Description=Microsoft ODBC Driver for TESTEXPRESS database
Server=tcp:192.168.200.37,1433
Database=BikeStores
User=ashell
Password=adc2023
Encrypt = no
