When an application connects to a database, it uses a set of connection parameters to define the connection.
Connection parameters include information such as the server name, the database name, and a user ID. A keyword-value pair (of the form parameter=value) specifies each connection parameter. For example, you specify the user ID connection parameter as:
UID=sa
Connection parameters are passed to the Adaptive Server ODBC driver as a connection string and are separated by semicolons:
parameter1=value1;parameter2=value2;...
In general, the connection string built by an application and passed to the driver does not correspond directly to the way a user enters the information. Instead, a user can fill in a dialog box, or the application can read connection information from an initialization file.