<varlistentry>
<term><parameter>connection-spec</parameter></term>
<listitem>
- <para>A vendor specific connection specification supplied
- as a list or as a string.</para>
+ <para>A SQL backend specific connection specification
+ supplied as a list or as a string.</para>
+ <para>For the MySQL backend, this list includes an
+ optional associative list of connection options. The
+ options list is parsed and supplied to the MySQL API
+ using <function>mysql_options</function> in between the
+ calls to <function>mysql_init</function>
+ and <function>mysql_real_connect</function>.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>