ASA Database Administration Guide
Connecting to a Database
Connecting from Sybase Central or Interactive SQL
When you are working with a database, all your requests and commands go through a driver to the database itself. Sybase Central and Interactive SQL support two main JDBC drivers: jConnect and the iAnywhere JDBC driver. Both are included with Adaptive Server Anywhere.
The iAnywhere JDBC driver is, in many cases, the preferred driver. It is the default driver for Interactive SQL and Sybase Central. Sybase jConnect is a platform-independent JDBC driver.
When you connect to a database in the Connect dialog, you can choose which driver you want to use for the connection. This is an optional configuration; the iAnywhere JDBC driver is the preferred driver and is automatically used for all connections unless you specify otherwise.
For more information on JDBC drivers, see Choosing a JDBC driver, Using the jConnect JDBC driver, and Working with ODBC data sources.
As a general rule, the jConnect driver cannot use ODBC data sources. However, Sybase Central and Interactive SQL are special cases. When you use the jConnect driver in either of them, you can specify an ODBC data source to establish a connection. For example, you can connect to the sample database using the ASA 9.0 Sample data source, even if you are using the jConnect driver.
This customized functionality is only available while you are working in Sybase Central or Interactive SQL. If you are constructing a JDBC application, do not try to use a data source to connect to a database.
To specify a driver for the connection
In Sybase Central, choose Tools
Configure the necessary settings on the Identification and Database tabs of the dialog.
On the Advanced tab of the dialog, select either jConnect5 or iAnywhere JDBC driver.