20.2.7.1 Connecting to ODBC using a string

connection-spec should have one of the forms:

username / password @ dsn

The general form.

dsn / username / password

For backward compatibility.

The two forms of strings are distinguished by the presence (or absence) of the ' @ ' character. In both forms, password can be omitted along with the preceding ' / '. Also, username can simply be omitted.

Note that this means that "xyz" and "@xyz" are both interpreted to give the same values ( username is null, password is null, dsn is "xyz" ).