FreeTDS Development Group

[Mark Schaal <mark AT champ.tstonramp.com>]

> 
> Mark, 
> 
> 
> > I don't see the need for connection level [endian] support.
> 
> Could you please clarify that?  
> 
> Is that because you don't see a technical reason, or because you don't think
> the library will be used in a way that would exercise such a feature?  
> 
> Doesn't endian-ness differ based on the host database's OS/hardware?  
> 
> Just trying to understand....
> 
> --jkl

What I understand "connection level" to mean, and I could be wrong,
is that the user could specify per connection "I want you to mimic
little/big-endian".  However, the only need I am aware of is to 
mimic little-endian on big-endian machine for TDS7.0 connections,
which we can auto-detect and set properly without user intervention.

In general endian-ness is based on CPU.  For our purposes it is the
client hardware that matters.  In TDS4.2 and TDS5.0 we specifiy in
the login packet whether data is formatted big- or little- and the
database interprets the packets accordingly.  It appears that MS 
discarded that in TDS7.0 so only little-endian (Intel) order is
supported.  (And I spent at least an hour fiddling with the TDS7
login packet hoping to find that support.  I believe the MS philosphy
is don't use the low-level protocol, route it through ODBC.)

I hope I didn't give the impression I meant don't support those
platforms.  I was trying to give my $.02 on how to provide the
support.

Hope that helps,

Mark
-- 
Mark J. Schaal                                  Phone:      (909) 620-7724
TST On Ramp                                     Fax:        (909) 620-8174
System Administrator                            E-Mail: mark AT tstonramp.com