Odtnhj

To establish an odbc Connection String in a Method, one could do it the following way:

odbcConnection = new OdbcConnection();
odbcConnection.Connection = "DRIVER=MySQL ODBC 5.2w Driver;"
+ "SERVER=localhost;PORT=3306;"
+ "DATABASE=dbdemo2;UID=demo-user";

Why does the DRIVER need to be mentioned in curly brackets ?

From the documentation

OdbcConnection.ConnectionString Property

connection-string ::= empty-string[;] | attribute[;] | attribute; connection-string 
empty-string ::= 
attribute ::= attribute-keyword=attribute-value | DRIVER=[]attribute-value[] 
attribute-keyword ::= DSN | UID | PWD 
 | driver-defined-attribute-keyword 
attribute-value ::= character-string 
driver-defined-attribute-keyword ::= identifier 

Gets or sets the string used to open a data source.

...

Applications do not have to add braces around the attribute value after the Driver keyword unless the attribute contains a semicolon
(;), in which case the braces are required. If the attribute value
that the driver receives includes braces, the driver should not remove
them but they should be part of the returned connection string.

A DSN or connection string value enclosed with braces () that contains any of the characters (),;?*=!@ is passed intact to the
driver. However, when you use these characters in a keyword, the
Driver Manager returns an error when you work with file DSNs, but
passes the connection string to the driver for regular connection
strings. Avoid using embedded braces in a keyword value.

The connection string may include any number of driver-defined
keywords. Because the DRIVER keyword does not use information from the
system, the driver must define enough keywords so that a driver can
connect to a data source using only the information in the connection
string. The driver defines which keywords are required to connect to
the data source.

In this case it probably doesn't need it, though there is no harm in adding braces