$db_host        = "server.mynetwork";
    $db_user        = "dbuser";
    $db_pass        = "dbpass";
    $dsn =         "DRIVER={MySQL ODBC 3.51 Driver};" . 
            "CommLinks=tcpip(Host=$db_host);" . 
            "DatabaseName=$db_name;" . 
            "uid=$db_user; pwd=$db_pass";

$conn =  odbc_connect($dsn, $db_user, $db_pass);
odbc_exec($conn, "SET NAMES 'UTF8'");
odbc_exec($conn, "SET client_encoding='UTF-8'");