Overview of basic configuration

All Open Client applications require the following basic configuration information obtained during initialization and connection:

Location of the Sybase installation directory as defined by the SYBASE environment variable.

In a heterogeneous environment that uses applications built for versions 10.x and later, you must explicitly set the SYBASE, SYBASE_OCS, and PATH environment variables at the command prompt, to point to the current version of the Open Client and Open Server installation.

For example, for applications using version 15.5 products installed in C:\SYBASE, open a command prompt and set the following environment variables:

set SYBASE=C:\SYBASE
set SYBASE_OCS=OCS-15_0
set PATH=%PATH%;%SYBASE%\%SYBASE_OCS%\bin;
%SYBASE%\%SYBASE_OCS%\dll

Locale name

Open Client uses the values of the following POSIX environment variables as locale names (does not apply to DB-Library):

Open Client later uses this value to obtain localization information from the locales.dat file. If LC_ALL, LANG, and sLanguage are not defined, Open Client uses “default” as the locale name.

Localized message and character set files

Open Client looks in the locales.dat file for an entry whose name matches the locale name determined in the previous step. Then, it loads the localized messages and character set files specified in the locales.dat file.

Name of the target server

Open Client obtains the name of the target server from one of the following sources, in the order listed:

  1. The client application, which can provide the server name in the call to ct_connect (or dbopen)

  2. The DSQUERY environment variable, if the application does not specify the target server

  3. The default name SYBASE, if DSQUERY is not set

The network address of the target server

Open Client gets the address(es) of the target server from the directory service or from the sql.ini file:

Security mechanism to be used

(Does not apply to DB-Library) If the client application requests network-based security services, Open Client looks in the [SECURITY] section of libtcl.cfg to determine which security driver to use.