Programmatic DSN creation - ODBCCONF.EXE alternative

• Orlando Colamatteo

  SSC Guru

  Points: 182293

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  May 7, 2011 at 5:40 pm

  #389472

  I currently employ a homegrown PowerShell script that iterates over a list and calls c:\windows\sysWOW64\odbcconf.exe as well as c:\windows\system32\odbcconf.exe to create both a 32-bit and 64-bit System DSN to alleviate deployment issues with SSIS packages and other apps not finding the DSN they need based on the mode they are in. I can only do this because I have buy-in from the system admin on the database servers (me) so all DSN creation is done using this homegrown PowerShell script written by the DBA (also me).

  According to this MSDN article:

  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee388579(v=vs.85).aspx

  it is noted that "ODBCCONF.EXE will be removed in a future version of Windows Data Access Components." and to "Avoid using this feature, and plan to modify applications that currently use this feature."

  ...however no links or info towards a viable alternative (that I saw) were provided and the only information I could dig up online (albeit with a few basic searches) was to edit the registry directly...but that did not sit well with me.

  Is anyone out there solving this same issue a different way?

  There are no special teachers of virtue, because virtue is taught by the whole community.
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