My team uses Perl (v 5.8.9, ActiveState) with DBD::ODBC to query various SQL Server databases. We mostly use the "dbi:ODBC:$DSN" form of connection string, since we have the ability to create system DSNs as needed.

This setup has been working fine under Windows Server 2003, but now we are trying to migrate to Windows Server 2008, and my database connections are failing.

Here's the error: DBI connect('OurDatabase','',...) failed: [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified (SQL-IM002)

Should I be focusing on specifying a default driver (if so, what and how?), or should I be focusing on the way I set up the OurDatabase data source name?

Update

Thanks to both of you for suggesting DSNless connections. I have gone and verified that I can connect without a DSN by saying

    my $connection 
        = 'dbi:ODBC:driver={SQL Server};'
        . 'Server=OurServer;'
        . 'Database=OurDatabase;'
        . 'Trusted_Connection=Yes'
        ;
    my $dbh = DBI->connect(
        $connection,
        undef,
        undef,
        { RaiseError => 1 }
    );

[download]

so this may be my solution. It means changing existing code (did we think we could migrate without any changes?), but it also means I can defer having to figure out the new security model that seems to be hiding my new system DSNs from my legacy code.

In reply to [answered] DBD::ODBC in Windows Server 2008 by Narveson

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