FreeTDS Development Group

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

On 12/21/99, "Andreas Tille <tillea AT rki.de>" wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> when I announced to build a Debian-Package from FreeTDS-JDBC I was
> asked to do it with FreeTDS as well.  No I'll possibly use it
> myself and I'm considering to package it.
> 
> Now I have some questions:
> 
> 1) What is the purpose of the file
> 
>      /usr/interfaces
> 
>    I tried to check the sources but didn't found a place, where it
>    is really needed.
>    The reason for this is that it conflicts with the Debian policy
>    for placing files.  If it is really needed it should go anywhere
>    under /usr/share (because it is a plain ASCII-file and so it
>    is architecture independent).  I'd like to suggest to place it
>    in 
>      /usr/share/freetds/interfaces
>    and I'd like to know, if this change would require any changes to
>    the source.
>    May be you could think about such kind of location for your
>    distribution or you could make the location configurable at
>    compile time.
>
The interfaces file stores the IP address and port of the dataserver.  It 
is referenced in src/tds/util.c if you are interested.
 
In order to maintain compatibility with Sybase's OpenClient the SYBASE 
environment variable is used as a location to look for the interfaces 
file.

I posted a message a few days ago about the search order that is used, but 
in brief it is: 1) specified in the application 2) $HOME/.interfaces 3) 
$SYBASE/interfaces

Theoretically it should probably go someplace similar to the ODBC 
configuration files (for unixODBC or iODBC) and the SYBASE var can be set 
to that directory. I suppose we need to rethink this a bit.  I'd like to 
keep things as distribution (and OS) neutral as possible.

> 2) *How* usable is the ODBC driver.  While reading the README file,
>    I wonder if this should/could go into a Debian package.  However,
>    ODBC would be the real clue in the FreeTDS package.

Not at all really, I have some time over the holidays and was considering 
sprucing it up, but currently it works only for simple queries.
 
> 3) I was not able to run the samples from the samples dircetory.
>    It would be really helpfull for me if someone could give me a
>    hint, what to fill into the connection data.  I run FreeTDS-JDBC
>    successfully and perhaps somebody could tell me what I have to
>    write in the configuration section of the three examples, if
>    I could successfully access my database with the following
>    JDBC-connection:
>
[snip] 
The samples directory is obsolete and needs to be removed (just haven't 
gotten around to it). You can now edit the PWD file and run the unittests 
by running 'make test' from the freetds directory.  There is a unittests 
directory under each libraries directory (tds, dblib, ctlib) which contains 
sample programs.

>    I have certain problems with the items I have to fill in the
>    C files.
> 
> Kind regards
> 
>         Andreas.
> 

Brian