I'm working on a Rails application which I've set up locally on my OSX Machine. However, the app, which typically runs on a Linux box, connects to a proprietary database via unixODBC. The database manufacturer only provides drivers for Linux and Windows. I did some searching around but couldn't figure out what the state of unixODBC is on OSX. Is there any binary compatibility with Linux drivers, or am I setting up another machine?
Thanks for your time,
-- Henry
iODBC, maintained and supported by my employer, has shipped as part of Mac OS X since Jaguar (10.2.x).
You'll be better off updating iODBC with all the latest patches (Apple tends to be a bit behind on these), than shifting to UnixODBC. You may also find some benefit in the Ruby+ODBC and Ruby-on-Rails docs we've published.
It's generally best to keep all your ODBC configuration in the default file locations for Mac OS X --
/Library/ODBC/odbc.ini
/Library/ODBC/odbcinst.ini
/Users/*/Library/ODBC/odbc.ini
/Users/*/Library/ODBC/odbcinst.ini
You can create symlinks from anywhere else you may want to have these files, e.g. --
ln -s ~/Library/ODBC/odbc.ini ~/.odbc.ini
Without knowing the target DBMS, it's impossible to point you to any DBMS-specific ODBC drivers for Mac OS X. However, my employer does offer a cross-platform Multi-Tier ODBC Bridge solution, which will let Mac OS X client applications connect through ODBC drivers on Windows or Linux.
Use Macports to install unixODBC. There are a lot of configuration files to get it going. The binaries will appear under "/opt/local/bin".
