MDAC 2.5 SDK - ODBC Programmer's Reference
Chapter 18: Installing ODBC Components
This chapter describes how ODBC components are installed and removed. Because driver developers always install an ODBC component (their driver), they need to read this chapter. Application developers need to read this chapter only if they will ship ODBC components with their applications. ODBC components include the Driver Manager, drivers, translators, the installer DLL, the cursor library, and any related files. For the purposes of this chapter, ODBC applications are not considered to be ODBC components.
Note This chapter is specific to Microsoft® Windows® platforms. How ODBC components are installed on other platforms is platform-specific.
ODBC components are installed and removed on a component-by-component basis, not a file-by-file basis. For example, if a translator consists of the translator itself and a number of data files, these files are installed and removed as a group; they must not be installed and removed on a file-by-file basis. The reason for this is to make sure that only complete components exist on the system.
For purposes of installing and removing components, the following are defined to be ODBC components:
With the support of Unicode in ODBC 3.5 and later, some consideration must be given to using OLE DB components with ODBC. The 1.1 version of the OLE DB Provider for ODBC was written to specific Unicode specifications within ODBC 3.0. Because these specifications changed in ODBC 3.5, it is necessary to have version 1.5 or later of the provider when using ODBC 3.5 and later. Specific information about this and other redistributable file issues can be found in the "Redistributing Microsoft Data Access Components" article in the MSDN Library. The article includes, among other topics: