FreeTDS Development Group

["Scott C. Gray" <gray AT voicenet.com>]

On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Brian Bruns wrote:

> 
> Certainly, work on TDS 7.0 shouldn't be affected by posessing the TDS spec
> from Sybase, and there is a body of reverse-engineered work that was
> available prior to spec release.  So, my guess would be that as long as you
> don't start fixing magic numbers and other unknowns from the 4.2/5.0 
> portions,
> you're safe.
> 
> Brian
> 
> (Just document code belonging to you as such...that way there are no gray
> areas).

I mentioned this in the list a while back, but no-one replied...

There is a tool, freely available from Sybase's web site, called Ribo
(named after the developer's dog).  Ribo sniffs TDS and dumps its 
contents in human readable for (i.e. translating the bytes to human
strings).  I scoured the download for anything resembling a license
and there isn't any.  IAMNAL (I Am Not A Lawyer), but as far as I can
tell, this should be sufficient to reverse engineer 95% of TDS 5.0
without violating any confidentiality agreements.  Any thoughts?

-scott

--
Scott C. Gray <gray AT voicenet.com>     "my keybard is brken"
       http://www.voicenet.com/~gray/sqsh.html