FreeTDS Development Group

[Brian Bruns <camber AT umcc.ais.org>]

On Sat, 26 Sep 1998, m. allan noah  wrote:

> all- please excuse my spelling and my ignorance of this subject...
> 
> but, i have been on searching for a way to connect my NT 4.0 server
> running M$$QL 6.5 to the box that fire-walls it, a RH5.0, 2.0.35 kerneled
> (is that a word :) box. the ntserver is masqueraded, so i can provide the
> best protection. 
> 
> i am interested in exctly why there are so many client
> library options for connection to sybase from linux, and why there is a
> need for freetds. does CTLib not provide the same functionality
> (regardless of copyright or src code?)

Well, first off source is a good and proper thing :) but there are many
dblib programs out there which would otherwise have to be converted to
ctlib to run on linux.  Some features of MS-SQL do not work with ctlib
btw, numerics and decimals I believe, I don't run MS-SQL so this is not
first hand knowledge, just what I've heard.
> 
> on a side note:
> i cannot get anything CTLib related (SQSH, SYBPERL, dbd:sybase) to compile
> on the piece of shit RH
> machine, but those ASE rpms were very well done. i have been told this is
> cause of glibc2 (libc6?) interaction with CTLib but it seems that all
> distro's are going to that.
> will freetds work properly with these libs, as that seems to be the only
> reason to put effort into it?
> 
Most of the work on freetds has been done on the dblib side, however there
are some ctlib functions written (enough for some test code to run). But
in time it will.  In the meantime, sqsh 1.4 (the last dblib version) runs
quite well, and sybperl::DBLib has been reported to run as well.  I have
added a couple of missing functions PHP needed as well, and will be
testing that soon. And since it is available as source it may be compiled
to libc5 or 6 (glibc2).

> side note two: has any thought been given to making freetds an ODBC driver
> instead of a drop-in replacement for CTLIB/dblib? i realize linux users
> are not going to follow any protocol that comes from redmond, but odbc is
> a very useful model. openlink includes ke lin's iODBC manager, it is GPL'd
> though. the DBI stuff in perl is great to work with, and it seems that the
> ODBC CLI would be just as good for the C programmer (correct me if i am
> wrong, perl is my primary language)
> 
ODBC is far from the worst thing to come from redmond...it's actually
based on the iso commitee's CLI spec, with 'enhancements' of course. ODBC
will be one of the supported CLIs available. (The full list is dblib,
ctlib, odbc, jdbc, and probably a c++ wrapper class somewhat based on 
jdbc for the c++ people)

> this seems like a good oportunity to push the ODBC as a viable LINUX
> solution. Samba has shown that interoperability is more important than
> turf wars, and the open-source model means we will eventually do it better
> than M$. the other option is to write freetds to support sqsh, which has
> not been updated in 10months?
>
This is working already as noted above. The author of sqsh seems to be a
busy guy, but really there is not much that needs to be done on sqsh.

> sorry if i dont know what i am talking about, just ignore me
> allan noah
> sysadmin
> pfeiffer university

I believe alot of this is covered in the FAQ.  If you have problems
compiling specific programs or getting a certain program to work post it
here and I'll look into it (or better yet go fix it and send me a patch!
:)

Brian