FreeTDS Development Group

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden AT schemamania.org>]

On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 21:23:48 +0100, "David Fraser" <david AT abelon.com>
wrote:
> 
> I tried removing the iODBC driver manager,
> and got my ODBC app to link with the FreeTDS ODBC library (libtdsodbc)
> pretty easily.

Good to hear.  
 
> You might
> argue, why use ODBC then if you are not going to use the Driver Manager
> - well think of it as insurance/future-proofing - future systems might
> have more memory and might talk to another database - so a Driver
> Manager can be slotted back in if needed.

True.  I'm curious, though, as far as future flexibility is concerned,
What does ODBC buy you that DBI doesn't?  

> However, there are a few pretty easy steps to getting this to work on a
> clean system, which would need incorporated into the source
> code/Makefile/configure script. (I'm assuming there aren't already
> options to run FreeTDS ODBC standalone - correct me if I'm wrong, but I
> couldn't find them).

http://www.freetds.org/userguide/x1853.htm

We have some terse instructions, but more would be better.  We certainly
don't have any support in "configure" for it.  

> Is this of interest to the FreeTDS developers? 

Yes!  

The place to change anything like this (except for documentation, which
really needs redoing) is in configure.in, which is used by autoconf to
generate the configure script.  We can't use patches to Makefiles and
configure, except as guidance for changes to upstream files.  

> or have I offended everyone's sensibilities by even suggesting such 
> an outrageous idea which violates the very foundations of the ODBC 
> architecture and threatens the moral fabric of our society? 

Er, no.  To do that, I think you have to win -- or, at least, steal -- an
election.  ;-)

Regards, 

--jkl