An administration program, the ODBC Administrator, is shipped with the Data Access SDK and can be redistributed by users of the SDK. In addition, developers can write their own administration programs. Generally, developers write their own administration programs only if they want to retain complete control over data source configuration, or if they are configuring data sources directly from an application that is acting as an administration program. For example, a spreadsheet program might allow users to add and then use data sources at run time.
The administration program first loads the installer DLL. It then calls functions in the installer DLL to perform the following tasks:
SQLManageDataSources displays a dialog box with which the user can add, modify, or delete data sources and specify tracing options; this function is called when the installer DLL is invoked directly from the Control Panel. SQLCreateDataSource displays a dialog box with which the user can only add data sources. SQLConfigDataSource passes the call directly to the driver setup DLL.
In all cases, the installer DLL calls ConfigDSN in the driver setup DLL to actually add, modify, or delete the data source. The driver setup DLL may prompt the user for additional information.