[R] Get list of ODBC data sources?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Mon, 22 May 2006, Jim Porzak wrote:

> Hello R Helpers,
>
> Before setting up a connection with RODBC, I would like to present my
> users with a pick list of ODBC data sources available in their
> environment. I may be missing something, but don't see anything in
> RODBC itself to return list of sources for use in select.list(). Any
> hints?

No, nor is there anything in ODBC per se.  You can use (in a GUI 
environment) the completion facilities of odbcDriverConnect.

> I'm running 2.3.0 on Win XP SP2.

But the ODBC data provider could be on a remote machine running a 
different OS.

It may be possible to ask Windows which User/System DSNs it knows about,
but that would not be part of ODBC nor portable.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595