Connecting to MyODBC

To communicate with a database, you need to specify a data source, which is exactly what it says—a source from which data can be fetched using an ODBC connection.

Each data source needs to be defined only once and is given a unique name known as a Data Source Name, or DSN. The DSN contains the connection parameters that identify a MySQL server and the user authentication required to log on.

Creating a Data Source on Windows

From the Start menu, select Settings, Control Panel, and then open Administrative Tools. Double-click Data Sources (ODBC)—on older versions of Windows, this might be called 32-Bit ODBC or simply ODBC.

The Data Source Administrator window appears. Figure 22.1 shows how this might look, although on your ...

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