Creating and configuring a DSN on Mac OS X

The Mac OS X environment has a GUI interface for creating and configuring an HCL Informix® ODBC data source name (DSN). This utility is the ODBC Administrator.

To create and configure an Informix DSN on Mac OS X:

1. Open the ODBC Administrator by choosing Applications > Utilities > ODBC Administrator.
2. Click the System DSN tab.
3. Click Add.
4. Select HCL Informix ODBC Driver, and click OK.
5. Enter a name in the Data Source Name field.
6. Optional: Enter information in the Description field if you want to include it.
7. Click Add.
8. Click Key, which appears directly under the Keyword column heading. A single click here enables you to edit the field in this row.
9. Type UID in the field so that it overwrites Key.
10. Click Value on the right side of the row, which appears directly under the Value column heading so that you can edit the field.
11. Type in the name of the login user that is used to connect to the database.
12. Repeat steps 7 and 9 to create three more row entries so that all the Keyword-Value pairs correspond with the entries in the following table. Enter the real information of your system in place of the variables in the Value column of the following table.

    Keyword	Value
    UID	your_login_user
    PWD	password_of_login_user
    Database	your_database
    ServerName	your_server_name

13. Click OK.
14. Edit the global sqlhosts file to specify server connectivity information for Informix ODBC data sources. This file is at /etc/InformixODBC/sqlhosts. The following is an example of a line entry in the sqlhosts file:

    odbc_demo   onsoctcp   clipper   turbo   csm=(SPWDCSM)

    The fields in this line define the following connectivity parameters:

    • Column 1 (odbc_demo in the example): server name (this should be identical to ServerName defined in the DSN)
    • Column 2 (onsoctcp as example): connection protocol
    • Column 3 (clipper as example): host name (a local computer must end in .local)
    • Column 4 (turbo as example): service name (as defined in etc/services) or port number
    • Column 5 (csm=SPWDCSM as example): optional connection setting, such as an Informix communications support module

    See the IBM® Informix Administrator's Guide for details on how to set up the sqlhosts file.