FreeTDS Development Group

["Darryl Friesen" <Darryl.Friesen AT usask.ca>]

Brian Bruns gave a wonderful explanation of the problems and possible
solutions for selecting large text fields.  I'm hoping Brian (or anyone) can
provide an equally wonderful explanation of where any how to set the TDS
version FreeTDS will use to talk to the server.

My understanding is there's 3 places this can be defined:

1. At compile time, using --with-tdsver=(4.2, 4.6, 5.0, or 7.0)
   This is only used when one of the other methods is not, is
   that correct?

2. Using the TDSVER environment variable.  The example in the User
   Guide shows a value of "42", not "4.2" like above.  Is that
   correct; no period?

3. In the interfaces file as the third field on the line.  Do the
   values specified here match the ones at build? ie 4.2, 4.6, 5.0
   or 7.0.  I've seen Usenet/web postings that indicate the value
   here should be something like "tds4.2" instead of "4.2" or "42".
   Which is correct?  See:

      http://www.phpbuilder.com/mail/php-db/2000072/0440.php

Which takes precidence, 2 or 3?

The reason I'm asking all this is that I'm having trouble with strings
longer than 255 characters AND with TEXT fields.  It seems like I need to be
sure I'm using TDS 7.0 to talk to my SQL server, but I'm not sure I have the
settings in the interfaces file or the environement set correctly.

I originally compiled FreeTDS using --with-tdsver=4.2, but have the
interfaces file and environment set to 7.0.  However, I'm seeing the same
type of truncation mentioned when using the 4.2 protocol, and recompiling
using --with-tdsver=7.0 causes my Perl/DBI script no end of trouble ("Out of
memory during large request" errors).

- Darryl

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  Darryl Friesen, B.Sc., Programmer/Analyst    Darryl.Friesen AT usask.ca
  Education & Research Technology Services,     http://gollum.usask.ca/
  Department of Computing Services,
  University of Saskatchewan
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  "Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes"