Can't open lib 'ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server'? Sym linking issue?

Question

When I try to connect to a sql server database with pyodbc (on mac):

import pyodbc

server = '####'
database = '####'
username = '####@####'
password = '#####'
driver='{ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server}'

pyodbc.connect('DRIVER='+driver+';SERVER='+server+';PORT=1443;DATABASE='+database+';UID='+username+';PWD='+password)

I get the following error:

Error: ('01000', "[01000] [unixODBC][Driver Manager]Can't open lib 'ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server' : file not found (0) (SQLDriverConnect)")

When I path in the actual driver location:

driver='/usr/local/lib/libmsodbcsql.13.dylib'

It starts working!

My odbcinst.ini looks like this:

[ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server]
Description=Microsoft ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server
Driver=/usr/local/lib/libmsodbcsql.13.dylib
UsageCount=1

How can I get my reference to driver='{ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server}' to start working again?

I initially used this guide to install the driver. And I'm using anaconda on Mac Sierra if that helps?

Answer 1

Running:

odbcinst -j

It yielded:

unixODBC 2.3.4
DRIVERS............: /etc/odbcinst.ini
SYSTEM DATA SOURCES: /etc/odbc.ini
FILE DATA SOURCES..: /etc/ODBCDataSources
USER DATA SOURCES..: /Users/emehex/.odbc.ini
SQLULEN Size.......: 8
SQLLEN Size........: 8
SQLSETPOSIROW Size.: 8

Instead of copying the files to the /etc/ directory (not sure why unixODBC thought they were there) I created a symbolic link to each file:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/etc/odbcinst.ini /etc/odbcinst.ini
sudo ln -s /usr/local/etc/odbc.ini /etc/odbc.ini

This solved the problem.

Answer 2

In my case, I have to change the pyodbc database driver string to
driver='{ODBC Driver 17 for SQL Server}'

actually, in my python code pyodbc was expecting ODBC Driver 13
but, as the ODBC Driver version was updated (because of ubuntu update) to current version ODBC Driver 17, the problem was occurred.

Answer 3

In my case, I have a Mac OS and the following commands fixed the problem:

brew tap microsoft/mssql-release https://github.com/Microsoft/homebrew-mssql-release
brew update
brew install msodbcsql mssql-tools

Answer 4

In my case, I fixed the problem with three steps as follow:

# Step1: install unixodbc 
brew install unixodbc

# Step2: install Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server on MacOS

brew tap microsoft/mssql-release https://github.com/Microsoft/homebrew-mssql-release
brew update
brew install msodbcsql mssql-tools

# Step3：verify odbcinst configuration path is correct

odbcinst -j

sudo ln -s /usr/local/etc/odbcinst.ini /etc/odbcinst.ini
sudo ln -s /usr/local/etc/odbc.ini /etc/odbc.ini

Answer 5

I have to add that if you are using a different driver (FreeTDS) and in your connection string you omit to mention it, it will default to driver='{ODBC Driver 17 for SQL Server} or something like like that.

So the solution is not to forget driver, you DB settings will look like this: 'default': { 'ENGINE': 'sql_server.pyodbc', 'HOST': '127.0.0.1', 'NAME': 'mydb', 'PORT': '1433', 'USER': 'sa', 'PASSWORD': '*****', 'OPTIONS':{ 'driver': 'FreeTDS', 'host_is_server': True, } }