sp_help problem

Brian Bruns camber at umcc.ais.org
Sat Jan 1 23:13:09 EST 2000




On Wed, 29 Dec 1999, Barke Erik wrote:

> The "Uknown marker etc" error message shows up when the
> Sql server is returning fields containing  NULL.
> It seems to me some fields containing NULL are impossible to
> retrieve using Sybase/Freetds.
> The workaround for me was using ISNULL; Ms Sql server 
> replaces the NULL value with any character[s] you choose.
> This way DBD:Sybase/FreeTds never have to handle NULL.
> 
> 	SELECT ISNULL(some_field, 'your_replacement_here')	
> 	FROM some_table
> 
> (To tell you the truth, I'm actually retreiving fields containing NULL
> without using
> ISNULL, beats me why it sometimes works and sometimes not...)
>
Can you tell me what types of fields you are having this problem with (or
more specifically I guess what types of fields are present in the select
where this problem occurs).  maybe we can sort it out.

> > Is it a known problem that sp_help <tablename> doesn't return all the
> > information sent back by the server when using freetds (5.0)?  If TDSVER
> > is set to 70 the first few pieces of information (table name, owner,
> > type, creation date) come back and then many lines of unknown markers;
> > here's some examples:
> > 
> > Unknown marker: 231!!
> > Unknown marker: 0!!
[snip]
> > [... continues on line this for quite a few lines ...]
> > 
> > If TDSVER is set to 42 the same first few pieces of information come
> > back, followed by some blank lines.  The real output for sp_help
> > <tablename> includes lots more information, such as column information,
> > indexes, constraints, etc.  sp_help is a stored procedure which (I
> > assume) executes multiple queries in MS SQL (7.0 in this case), and I'm
> > guessing that freetds (or maybe DBD::Sybase, which I'm using over it)
> > doesn't yet know what to do with a multiple result-set stored procedure.
> > Is this a reasonable guess?  And if so, any idea if such support is in
> > the works?

The support is all there and I just tested it under 4.2 connecting to
Sybase 11.x, and everything works right.  I am temporarily without access
to MS SQL, so what would be really helpful is to set TDSDUMP, like:

export TDSDUMP=/tmp/freetds.log

and send the revelent parts of the log to me.




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