iodbc and mac os x problems

working with the iodbc driver manager on mac os x has been a frustration on two fronts.

first, the installer api functions provided by iodbc constantly set the configuration mode to ODBC_BOTH_DSN, which means you have to keep resetting it to the correct value after nearly every installer api call. this problem is platform-agnostic — the iodbc code is just plain wrong.

second, when called from the odbc administrator application on mac os x, any failures that the driver reports or passes through from the installer api in registering the driver are ignored, and the application instead uses a generic prompt for dsn configuration.

so even with the first problem fixed, the second problem has led to a lot of tail-chasing until i discovered that the odbc administrator application only obtains enough privileges to write to /Library/ODBC as a member of the admin group, not as the root user. because the connector/odbc installer was trying to be helpful in only creating the /Library/ODBC/*.ini files with root-writable permissions, it was running straight into the second problem.

this is all related to bug #31495 filed against mysql connector/odbc.