Friend I have a application, which displays the ODBC connection created in Windows and I check whether the Connection is valid or not. The Same-way, if i provide a UNIX BOX machine to the application, It should display the ODBC Configured in the UNIX Box. Is it possible. Can a Windows based application can access the list of ODBC Connections created on UNIX BOX. Please provide with your valuable answers. Regards Praveen

Not exactly. ODBC is a stand-alone "bridge program" between two different system, which can have different O/Ss, hardware, database engines, etc. It's the proverbial "Brunette between two Blondes" translator. You write a command in some language (Access, SQL, Paradox, etc.) on your machine, your ODBC driver wraps this in a packet and sends it to the ODBC connection on the other box, that ODBC sends the command on to the O/S, which processes it and returns a result. The result is sent by the ODBC connection to your machine and received by the ODBC driver, which translates it into something your application can understand. If you set up an ODBC connection on a UNIX box any machine with a compatible ODBC driver that can network with the UNIX box can talk to the ODBC connection if it has its network address. It can't really "detect" the ODBC connection except by running through the entire list of available network addresses and testing each one of these in sequence. If you have 4-5 ODBC connections set up on your UNIX box each has to have its own unique address and there's no way for a remote computer to "find" all of these except by being told or somehow scanning all available addresses for them.