ODBC Driver for Windows

Owned by Boaz Raufman
Apr 02, 2023
3 min read

Jethro ODBC driver enables access to data stored in Jethro instances from Business Intelligence (BI) applications with ODBC support.

The following sections specify the steps required for the installation and configuration of Jethro ODBC driver:

Installation and configuration

Download

Jethro ODBC drivers (64 bit and 32 bit) can be downloaded from the drivers download page.

Installation

To install the ODBC driver:

  1. Double-click the newly downloaded file to open the InstallShield wizard for JethroODBC.

     

  2. Click Next to proceed to the following screen, which allows you to choose whether to accept the default installation location or to select another location.

  3. On next step ("Ready to Install the Program"), review the installation settings, and if these settings are appropriate, click Install.



  4. Click Finish to complete the installation.

Tableau Datasource Customization (TDC)

If Tableau is installed, Jethro ODBC driver installer will suggest to copy a jethro specific connection settings for Tableau, to the required Tableau directories. The following message will appear when the driver installation is completed:

*To learn more about Tableau's TDC, visit Tableau's documentation website.

Click Yes to allow ODBC installer to copy jethro.tdc to the correct location in Tableau.

If you choose No, Jethro will not work properly with Tableau until the tdc file is copied manually to the correct location for Tableau.

If you install the ODBC before Tableau is installed, and later on install Tableau, you need to manually copy the file jethro.tdc from Jethro ODBC driver installation path (by default, C:\Program Files\JethroData\JethroODBC) to the required location for Tableau, or the equivalent directory if you install it on a non-English file system.

Setting a new connection (DSN)

To setup a DSN based connection to Jethro instance on Windows, configure a system DSN with the instance connection details.

  1. Open the proper ODBC Data Source Administrator window, according to the type of ODBC platform you have chosen to install.

For 64-bit: %systemdrive%\Windows\System32\Odbcad32.exe

For 32-bit: %systemdrive%\Windows\SysWoW64\Odbcad32.exe

2. Click the System DSN tab, as shown below.



3. Click Add to open the Create New Data Source pop-up. This pop-up includes a sample DSN called JethroODBC, which was automatically created during installation.

4. Double-click this DSN to open the JethroODBC configuration dialog.

(The following image displays a sample settings used to connect to a single Jethro server)

To connect to a single Jethro server, specify:

      • Host - Host name or IP address of the machine that runs JethroServer.
      • Port - The port to which JethroServer listens, on the machine running JethroServer's default port is 9111, but the actual port number can be verified on the server by viewing the configuration file $JETHRO_HOME/instances/services.ini.

To connect to multiple Jethro servers, by using the driver client-side load balancing feature, specify:

In both cases, also specify:

      • Instance -The name of the Jethro instance on the server.
      • Login Id / password - Default username/password is jethro/jethro..

5. To create additional DSN connections, repeat the previous steps.

Setting a new connection (DSN-less)

Some BI applications allow setting up a DSN-less connection. The interface for setting up a DNS-less connection is BI tools specific, and it should generate a Jethro ODBC connection string. Jethro recommends using a DSN connection if possible, but some tools requires DSN-less connection string only.

The elements format of the connection string is:

DRIVER={JethroODBCDriver};HOST={host};PORT={port};INSTANCE={instance_name};UID={user};PWD={password};

For example:

DRIVER=JethroODBCDriver;HOST=192.0.2.1;PORT=9111;INSTANCE=demo;UID=jethro;PWD=jethro;

Troubleshooting Connection Issues

If connection with the client is not successfully established, check the following troubleshooting suggestions:

  • Verify that the JethroServer process is running on the server provided.
  • Verify that the JethroServer port is accessible from the client (no firewalls are blocking the connection).
  • Check the ODBC logs (by default, located on C:\Users\\{user_name}\AppData\Local\Jethrodata\odbc64).
    Note: In order to see the AppData directory make sure that hidden files and directories are shown.
  • If you receive ODBC system error 193 when trying to connect – this is a generic ODBC error message meaning that a 32-bit application is trying to use a 64-bit driver. Ensure that you use a 64-bit version of the client application (BI tool and so on).

Configure Jethro ODBC connections with BI applications

Any general-purpose BI/SQL query tool that supports the SQL-92 standard should be able to connect with Jethro.

The instructions below refer to Tableau, Qlik Sense, MicroStrategy, and SAS JMP, but other tools would most probably require a similar process to establish that connection.