MDAC 2.5 SDK - ODBC Programmer's Reference
Appendix G: Driver Guidelines for Backward Compatibility

SQLSetConnectOption Mapping

When an ODBC 2.x application calls SQLSetConnectOption through an ODBC 3.x driver, the call to

SQLSetConnectOption(hdbc, fOption, vParam)

will result as follows:

If fOption indicates an ODBC-defined connection attribute that requires a string, the Driver Manager calls
```
SQLSetConnectAttr(ConnectionHandle, Attribute, ValuePtr, SQL_NTS)
```
If fOption indicates an ODBC-defined connection attribute that returns a 32-bit integer value, the Driver Manager calls
```
SQLSetConnectAttr(ConnectionHandle, Attribute, ValuePtr, 0)
```
If fOption indicates a driver-defined connection attribute, the Driver Manager calls
```
SQLSetConnectAttr(ConnectionHandle, Attribute, ValuePtr, BufferLength)
```

In the preceding three cases, the ConnectionHandle argument is set to the value in hdbc, the Attribute argument is set to the value in fOption, and the ValuePtr argument is set to the same value as vParam.

Because the Driver Manager does not know whether the driver-defined connection attribute needs a string or 32-bit integer value, it has to pass in a valid value for the BufferLength argument of SQLSetConnectAttr. If the driver has defined special semantics for driver-defined connect attributes and needs to be called using SQLSetConnectOption, it must support SQLSetConnectOption.

If an ODBC 2.x application calls SQLSetConnectOption to set a driver-specific statement option in an ODBC 3.x driver, and the option was defined in an ODBC 2.x version of the driver, a new manifest constant should be defined for the option in the ODBC 3.x driver. If the old manifest constant is used in the call to SQLSetConnectOption, the Driver Manager will call SQLSetConnectAttr with the StringLength argument set to 0.

For an ODBC 3.x driver, the Driver Manager no longer checks to see if fOption is in between SQL_CONN_OPT_MIN and SQL_CONN_OPT_MAX, or is greater than SQL_CONNECT_OPT_DRVR_START.

Setting Statement Options on the Connection Level

In ODBC 2.x, an application could call SQLSetConnectOption to set a statement option. When that is done, the driver establishes the statement option as a default for any statements later allocated for that connection. It is driver-defined whether the driver sets the statement option for any existing statements associated with the specified connection.

This ability has been deprecated in ODBC 3.x. ODBC 3.x drivers need only support setting ODBC 2.x statement attributes at the connection level if they want to work with ODBC 2.x applications that do this. ODBC 3.x applications should never set statement attributes at the connection level. ODBC 3.x statement attributes cannot be set at the connection level, with the exception of the SQL_ATTR_METADATA_ID and SQL_ATTR_ASYNC_ENABLE attributes, which are both connection attributes and statement attributes, and can be set at either the connection level or the statement level.