IBM i Access ODBC Installation

The instructions for installing and ODBC driver and manager and the IBM i ODBC driver for Db2 on i will depend on what operating system you are running. Select your operating system below to see setup instructions for getting ODBC on your system and connected to IBM i.

IBM i

The ODBC driver for IBM i is provided in the ibm-iaccess package, so it can be easily installed with yum. For instance:

yum install ibm-iaccess

Installing this RPM will do the following:

  • Install the IBM i Access ODBC driver

  • Install the unixODBC driver manager

  • Register the driver with the driver manager by putting the appropriate information in the odbcinst.ini file (see using).

  • Create a datasource name (DSN) for your local system called *LOCAL. This is discussed further in the “using” doc.

Linux

IBM now has RPM and DEB repositories for Linux available directly from IBM for the IBM i Access Client Solutions application package, which includes the IBM i Access ODBC driver.

On Linux, we will be using unixODBC as our driver manager. Fortunately, unixODBC is automatically pulled in when you install the IBM i Access ODBC Driver for Linux, so there isn’t any set up that you have to do for this stage. If you want to develop applications using ODBC packages like pyODBC for Python or odbc for Node.js, you will have to manually use yum to install unixODBC-devel as well.

Installing the Repository

The repositories are located under https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/ibmi/products/odbc/.

Red Hat-based Distribution Setup

curl https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/ibmi/products/odbc/rpms/ibmi-acs.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/ibmi-acs.repo

SUSE-based Distribution Setup

curl https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/ibmi/products/odbc/rpms/ibmi-acs.repo | sudo tee /etc/zypp/repos.d/ibmi-acs.repo

Debian-based and Ubuntu-based Distribution Setup

curl https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/ibmi/products/odbc/debs/dists/1.1.0/ibmi-acs-1.1.0.list | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ibmi-acs-1.1.0.list

Installing the ODBC driver

Red Hat-based Distribution Installation

sudo dnf install --refresh ibm-iaccess

SUSE-based Distribution Installation

sudo zypper refresh
sudo zypper install ibm-iaccess

Debian-based and Ubuntu-based Distribution Installation

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ibm-iaccess

Windows

Driver Manager for Windows

Windows comes preinstalled with an ODBC driver manager. To access it, search for Administrative Tools on your system (either through the search bar, or Control Panel > System and Security > AdministrativeTools), and then from there select ODBC Data Sources (either 32-bit or 64-bit).

From this application, you can set up your drivers.

Driver for Windows

You will have to install the ODBC driver that allows Windows ODBC driver manager to talk to Db2 on i. To get the driver, visit the IBM i Access Client Solutions page and select Downloads for IBM i Access Client Solutions. After logging in and redirected to the IBM I Access Client Solutions download page, scroll down and download the ACS Windows App Pkg English (64bit).

When the package has been downloaded and has been installed on your system, it should be available to see on your ODBC Data Source Administrator application.

macOS

Driver Manager for macOS

On macOS, you will need unixODBC as your ODBC driver manager. Many macOS ODBC programs use another driver manager called iodbc, but the IBM i ODBC driver will not work with iodbc. unixODBC is available from Homebrew, and can be installed running the following command:

brew install unixodbc

Driver for macOS

IBM now has a repository for the macOS driver as well. This repository is set up as a Tap.

Installing the Repository

The repositories are located under https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/ibmi/products/odbc/macos.

brew tap ibm/iaccess https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/ibmi/products/odbc/macos/tap/

Installing the ODBC driver

brew install ibm-iaccess