FreeTDS Development Group

[Bill Tutt <rassilon AT list.org>]

On Fri, 10 Sep 1999, Brian Bruns wrote:

> 
> Wow, this indeed does only affect MS SQL Servers. This message may shed
> some light on the subject (it was posted to the list by Bill Tutt on
> August 28)
> 
> > A little birdie from MS support mentioned that SQL 7 unintentionally 
> > broke TDS 4.2 complatiblility and that the following problems are
> > experienced by big endian sybase clients:
> >
> >      1) selecting datetime, smalldatetime, and money data types return
> >         incorrect results.
> >      2) Error numbers at the client are always wrong.
> >      3) bcp just won't work.
> 
> So, it appears that microsoft has broken big endian support for the above
> types.  Good news it can be fixed. Try and do that with closed source
> libraries!
> 
> Luckily the login ack token has a place where the servers version number
> is returned, so we should be able to fix this without breaking older
> versions of SQL Server. I'll brew something up and let you know when it's
> ready.
> 

Just to be annoying, remember that this is going to be fixed in a SQL 7
service pack/QFE if not in the post SQL 7 releases as MS is commited to
retaining TDS 4.2 compatibility with Sybase clients. (No I don't know when
the fix will happen, nor if a QFE is yet available.) I don't know if the
login ack token has enough information in it to allow you to handle broken
and unbroken servers.... (configuration option??)
 
Just trying to complicate Brian's life,
Bill