Is there any reason why you want to use ODBC on a non-Windows system? ODBC adds a lot of overhead and prevents using shortcuts. For most free and many commercial RBDMS', you can get native DBI drivers (in the DBD:: namespace) that are faster and support special features of the individual databases. Unless you have very special requirements (such as a 3rd party application requiring an ODBC manager), it is very likely that you need neither DBD::ODBC nor an ODBC manager. Install the required client libraries provided by the RBDMS and the native DBD (DBD::Pg, DBD::mysql, DBD::Oracle, DBD::DB2, ...) and you're done. If you want to connect to a MS SQL Server on a Windows server, read the DBD::ODBC::FAQ. From there, you will learn that you either need to spend money or use DBD::ProxyServer, DBD::Gofer, or DBD::Sybase.

Alexander