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  • From: James K. Lowden <jklowden AT speakeasy.org>
  • To: TDS Development Group <freetds AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: conversion status
  • Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 00:37:42 -0400


All,

I tested the dbconvert() tonight. I thought you might be interested in
what I found.

Executive summary: B+. No segfaults. Mostly correct outcomes when the
return code indicates success. Unexotic conversions mostly succeed.
Failures trigger the error handler with oh-so-helpful messages.

You can reproduce my results if you like, by looking at this page:

http://www.SchemaMania.org/freetds/cvs/freetds/src/dblib/unittests/

You need: convert_acid.c and eg_handlers.h
also: convert_acid.make (a shell script)
and convert_acid.output (my results)
and killer_query.sql

The query returns one row of 18 datatypes. The program executes a query
(from stdin) and attempts to convert each value in the result set to every
known datatype. It consults dbwillconvert() first, and doesn't attempt to
convert incompatible types.

Anyone think any of this should be in cvs?

== the results (with TDS 5.0) ==

Forget Binary, image, numeric, and decimal. They're mostly broken.

input status comment
===== ====== =======
char OK No numeric/decimal, no money.
text, varchar Perfect!
bit OK No numeric/decimal.
tinyint OK No numeric, image.
int, smallint OK No numeric/decimal, image/binary.
real, float fair No numeric, image, integers; maybe money.
datetime OK No image/binary.
smalldatetime OK No image/binary.
money fair No numeric, image, integers.
money wrong float & real yield -283649471676416.
smallmoney OK No numeric/decimal, image/binary.
smallmoney odd 201203.04 -> real yields 201203.046875
numeric broken char/varchar only.
decimal broken char/varchar, float/real only.
timestamp broken char/varchar only.
image,varbinary broken char, text, binary only.

== conclusions ==

0. Everything can be made into a char/varchar!
1. Money needs attention. Should convert to int, should correctly
convert to floating point. This is just a debugging effort; the code is
there.
2. What happened to float -> int?
3. Numeric/decimal is not ready.

As far as I'm concerned, 1 & 2 have to work in 0.60. Numeric is the other
big hole, but I don't consider it essential. I know, I've many times said
"any<->any in 0.60". I wasn't thinking about legal weird conversions like
"datetime<->image". If we crossed those three items off the list (as
done), I'd consider the job complete.

And, if someone wants to make numeric work in 0.60, you've still got a
couple of weeks!

The mere fact that my testing was worth bothering with is evidence of how
far we've come. I'm going to return to updating the UG in preparation for
our release. As soon as money works, I'll arrange a pre-release.

I hope you're having fun. I sure am.

Regards,

--jkl




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