FreeTDS Development Group

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

On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 11:39:08 +0200, "ZIGLIO Frediano"
<Frediano.Ziglio AT vodafone.com> wrote:
> > One thing I've learned lately: there has to be a way to turn 
> > off single-byte conversions.  The client might want the data as-is.  
> > 
> 
> Mmm... when should conversions be turned off ??

When the client is misconfigured or when the data are encoded in something
other than the client's native charset.  

The most obvious case is bcp.  The data in a file could come from
anywhere; there's no rule that a UTF-8 client can't bcp-in a file of
ISO-8859-1 data.  Or, for that matter, that when a client extracts data,
he must write the data encoded per his installed charset.  

It's also possible to use FreeTDS where we don't know anything about the
true client, because we're a proxy for another machine.  Say, for an http
server.  In that case the server (our client application) might want the
data-as-data: straight-through, unmunged.  He can then do his own iconv
processing, on a per-client basis.  

Some applications place encoding responsibility on the client; the client
must match the server, else the manager in charge of the client data is
wrong.  Any intelligence on our part breaks the contract.  

I like designs that make intelligent choices based on what they can/should
know, but there are situations where finer control is a requirement.  

--jkl