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Subject: FreeTDS Development Group

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  • From: "Bill Thompson" <thompbil AT exchange.uk.ml.com>
  • To: freetds AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: db-lib bcp interface
  • Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 05:45:30 -0500


I am currently working on a project to migrate a large Sybase database to
SQL Server 2000. I have been pursuing a strategy of using Sybase open
client 11 (db-lib) to connect to SQL server (using dbsetversion() to talk
TDS 4.2). This works fine apart from the db-lib bcp API which clearly has
some fundamental problems.

As a consequence I have been experimenting with the FreeTDS dblib bcp (
the bcp_exec functionality).
I have discovered some fundamental issues with this which I would like to
resolve. I would also like to develop this further and possibly complete
the coding of the remaining functions. I have some questions though.

1) Whose responsibility is it to resolve the big-endian/little-endian
question - the client or the server? I notice that the client tells the
server on the login record which type of architecture it is, so I am
assuming it is the server's responsibility to convert any raw numeric
fields. If it is the server's responsibility then we have a problem,
because my testing shows that SQL server 2000 is assuming that all data is
little-endian.

2) Does the Client know in any way (apart from the TDS version) what it is
talking to at the other end ?

3) does anyone have any sort of specification of what the TDS bcp data
packets look like. I can deduce this from the code, but a spec would help
:-)

4) Is anyone else working on this area at present, or planning to ?




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