[freetds] seeking the FA for a Q on db-lib on Windows

Reid, Roger L. roger.reid at dpw.com
Mon Oct 22 10:50:53 EDT 2007


I was not able to locate in the list archives or the docs a certain, recent answer to the question: can I compile & run in Windows (x86 and/or x64), and what compilers are used.  I know folks have worked on it, not clear where it stands.  Specifically I want to use dblib to compile Sybase::DBI and sqsh on Windows.

I am embarrassed to be asking one of these "does it run on XXXX" questions - especially when a response might be "why would you need to do that".   I've used FreeTDS for a long time so we can run dblib programs on Solaris - Perl and C - with backend neutrality
for Sybase and MS SQL Server.

Now we find we'd like to run some Sybase::DBI stuff from XP, Server 2003, etc.   Searching brought up old information that this was basically for "everything but Windows" - after all, wasn't that the original impetus, to work with SQL Server from non-Windows platforms?

Our shop now has a strong FreeTDS culture - and a long Unix history - so what's happening now is some processes move to Windows servers, and the developers expect the same Perl / Sybase DBD code to run.  Using Sybase or MS specific libraries isn't the preferred answer, since often we're doing Perl to coordinate between multiple databases (I can hear the horrified gasps over on the various (excellent but MS centric) mailing lists now.   I really confused folks on one of them by talking about MS SQL Server maintenance and ETL using cron jobs from Unix boxes....)

Anyway - sorry about that.   If I can get the information, I'll gladly edit it into shape to be dropped into the FAQ.

roger reid


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