FreeTDS Development Group

["Eric Deutsch" <edeutsch AT systemsbiology.org>]

> From: Lowden, James K [mailto:LowdenJK AT bernstein.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 9:14 AM

[snip]

> ODBC.  I'm on record as disliking ODBC, and Bill doesn't use it
either.
> But
> Eric, Freddy, you guys seem to know it quite well.  Does the above
scheme
> sound good to you, and could you make any needed adjustments to the
odbc
> layer where conversions are concerned?  I think it's just as important
> that
> odbc work correctly, personal prejudices aside.

Let me first just say that I don't know ODBC very well at all.  I use
DBD::Sybase or db-lib directly for everything I do.

But I'm interested in ODBC.  I hear rumors that it might support
parameter binding, a feature I'm very keen to have.  DBD::Sybase +
FreeTDS does not (the FreeTDS part of that combo being the problem)
allow that.  I'm also in a pretty good position to do some testing with
programs that can use either DBD::Sybase or DBD::ODBC.  ODBC doesn't
work very well for me at the moment; I can issue queries and get
resultsets, but the resultsets are not well-formed.  I'd be happy to
report bugs if anyone's interested in fixing them, but I don't have
enough time or desire to devote to learning how to fix them myself.  I'm
much more interested in getting DBD::Sybase + FreeTDS working 100% via
TDS 7.0 or 8.0.

Having blathered on about this, I agree 100% with your Principles,
James.  I think tds_convert_text() should be its minimal self as
discussed and the API's deal with all the terminating, padding, etc.
This seems to be working fine with ct-lib/db-lib right now, although
it's not working with ODBC, but I think it's the ODBC layer that needs
work, not tds_convert_text().

But I don't understand the layout of the code very well, so my opinion
shouldn't be given much weight...

Eric