This section describes how to set up ODBC connectivity and configure DSNs on several Linux distributions: Debian-based systems, like Ubuntu, and Red Hat Linux platforms, like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Fedora.

Minimum Linux Versions

Here are the minimum supported versions for Red Hat-based and Debian-based systems:

OS	Min. Version
Ubuntu	18.04
Debian	10
RHEL	8
Fedora	28
SUSE	15

Installing the Driver Dependencies

Run the following commands as root or with sudo to install the necessary dependencies:

• Debian/Ubuntu:
  

  apt-get install libc6 libstdc++6 zlib1g libgcc1

• RHEL/Fedora:
  

  yum install glibc libstdc++ zlib libgcc

Installing the Driver

You can use standard package management systems to install the driver.

On Debian-based systems, like Ubuntu, run the following command with root or sudo:

dpkg -i /path/to/driver/setup/OracleOciODBCDriverforUnix.deb 

On systems that support the RPM package format, run the following command with root or sudo:

rpm -ivh /path/to/driver/OracleOciODBCDriverforUnix.rpm 

Licensing the Driver

Run the following commands to license the driver. To activate a trial, omit the <key> input.

cd /opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-oracleoci/bin/
sudo ./install-license.sh <key>

Connecting through the Driver Manager

The driver manager loads the driver and passes function calls from the application to the driver. You need to register the driver with the driver manager and you define DSNs in the driver manager's configuration files.

The driver installation registers the driver with the unixODBC driver manager and creates a system DSN. The unixODBC driver manager can be used from Python and from many other applications. Your application may embed another driver manager.

Creating the DSN

See Using unixODBC to install unixODBC and configure DSNs. See Using the DataDirect Driver Manager to create a DSN to connect to OBIEE, Informatica, and SAS.

Connecting to Oracle OCI

Oracle OCI supports the following connection types:

• Oracle Server
• OracleTNS
• LDAP

Oracle Server

After you have added the appropriate libraries to your PATH (as described in Before You Connect), set these properties:

• User: The user Id provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
• Password: The password provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
• Port: The port used to connect to the server hosting the Oracle database.
• ServiceName: The service name of the Oracle database. You can obtain this value by querying global_name (select * from global_name) using the Oracle SQL*PLUS command line.
• Server: The host name or IP address of the server hosting the Oracle database.

OracleTNS

To authenticate via OracleTNS, set these properties:

• User: The user Id provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
• Password: The password provided for authentication with the Oracle database.
• DataSource: The connect descriptor (TNS connect string) or a connection name identifies the database you need to connect to. You can find these values in your tnsnames.ora file.

For example,

DataSource='(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(protocol_address_information))(CONNECT_DATA= (SERVICE_NAME=service_name)))'

LDAP

To authenticate via the LDAP server, set these properties.

• User: The user Id of a user account associated with the Oracle database.
• Password: The password associated with the specified user account.
• LDAPUri: The LDAP URI associated with the LDAP server you want to connect to.
• LDAPUser: The name of the user account on the specified LDAP server that you want to use to connect to Oracle OCI data.
  • Optional if your system administrator allows anonymous LDAP logins.
• LDAPPassword: The password associated with the specified LDAP user.
  • Optional if your system administrator allows anonymous LDAP logins.

Your connection string should look similar to this:

LDAPUri=ldap://myldap.com:389/SERVICE_EXMPL,cn=OracleContext,dc=example,dc=com; User=ORACLEUSER; Password=OracleUserPassword;

Set the Driver Encoding

The ODBC drivers need to specify which encoding to use with the ODBC Driver Manager. By default, the CData ODBC Drivers for Unix are configured to use UTF-16 which is compatible with unixODBC, but other Driver Managers may require alternative encoding.

Alternatively, if you are using the ODBC driver from an application that uses the ANSI ODBC API it may be necessary to set the ANSI code page. For example, to import Japanese characters in an ANSI application, you can specify the code page in the config file '/opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-oracleoci/lib/cdata.odbc.oracleoci.ini':

[Driver]
AnsiCodePage = 932