Symptom
You are getting unexplained exceptions and experiencing increased memory usage when using Microsoft's ODBC drivers to connect to your third party database.
Cause
Microsoft's ODBC drivers leak memory over a long period of time.
Solution
When setting up your ODBC data source, use your database vendor's latest ODBC driver rather than the one provided with Windows.
To set up a database source:
- Click Start > Settings > Control Panel. The Control Panel dialog box appears.
- Double-click Administrative Tools. The Administrative Tools dialog box appears.
- Double-click Data Sources (ODBC). The ODBC Data Source Administrator dialog box appears.
- Click the System DSN tab.
- Click Add. The Create New Data Source dialog box appears.
- Select the vendor driver that is associated with your database. In this example, Oracle in XE has been selected, rather than Microsoft ODBC for Oracle.
- Click Finish. The ODBC Setup dialog box associated with your database appears. The specifics of this dialog box are dependant on the database driver you select. Typically, you:
- In Data Source Name, type the name of your database.
- In Description, type a description of your database.
- In the Database section, click Select. The Select Database dialog box appears.
- Browse to find your database.
- Click OK. The location of your database appears in the Database section.
- Click OK. Your new data source appears in the ODBC Data Source Administrator dialog box.
- Click OK.