FreeTDS Development Group

["Michael Hudin" <hudin AT zoetrope.com>]

I'm using DBI and DBD::SYBASE through freetds 4.2 to connect to an
MSSQL 7.0 sp4 server.

I'm trying to retrieve a pdf file from the database--I've been doing
this for years on an NT webserver using ODBC, but Linux and FreeTDS
is having problems with it.

The pdf file is, as you may imagine, stored in a column of type
IMAGE.  If I try to retrieve the entire file I just get an empty
string.  I can get the datalength of the file, and I can use
SUBSTRING to retrieve up to 228 bytes of data from the file (229
bytes or more results in a 'segmentation error').

I've tried setting the TEXTSIZE to be larger than the file I'm
retrieving, but it has had no apparent effect.  To demonstrate,
here's a snippet of code that shows what's happening, followed by the
resulting output:


- - - - CODE - - - - -
#!/usr/bin/perl

use DBI;
use strict;

my ($textsize, $size, $part_of_data, $all_data);

my $dbh = DBI->connect([working connect string]);

($textsize, $size, $part_of_data, $all_data) =
$dbh->selectrow_array("SELECT \@\@textsize, datalength(pdf),
SUBSTRING(pdf, 1, 20), pdf FROM pdf_sheets WHERE pdf_id = 1");

print <<EOF;
Initial Textsize: $textsize
File Size: $size
Part of Data: $part_of_data
All Data: $all_data

EOF

$dbh->do("SET TEXTSIZE 102400" );

($textsize, $size, $part_of_data, $all_data) =
$dbh->selectrow_array("SELECT \@\@textsize, datalength(pdf),
SUBSTRING(pdf, 1, 20), pdf FROM pdf_sheets WHERE pdf_id = 1");

print <<EOF;
New Textsize: $textsize
File Size: $size
Part of Data: $part_of_data
All Data: $all_data
EOF

exit();


- - - - RESULT - - - - -

Initial Textsize: 4096
File Size: 92029
Part of Data: '0x255044462d312e330d25e2e3cfd30d0a31203020'
All Data: ''

New Textsize: 102400
File Size: 92029
Part of Data: '0x255044462d312e330d25e2e3cfd30d0a31203020'
All Data: ''