FreeTDS Development Group

["Lowden, James K" <LowdenJK AT bernstein.com>]

> From: freetds-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
> [mailto:freetds-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Steve 
> Kirkendall
> Sent: May 17, 2004 1:11 PM
> "James K. Lowden" <jklowden AT schemamania.org> wrote on Sunday, 
> May 16, 2004:
> > 
> > If you look in the ML archives, you'll find a short thread 
> a few months
> > ago about timestamp data as it relates to BCP.  IIRC, the only way a
> > client knows it's got a timestamp column -- as opposed to, 
> say, a generic
> > binary -- is that the server sets the usertype to 50.  
> You'll find some
> > brief mentions of that in Sybase's TDS functional specs, and, less
> > plainly, in Microsoft's documentation.  
> 
> Very odd.  So the SYBDATETIME type code isn't used at all?  

On the contrary.  The datatypes TIMESTAMP and DATETIME are two different 
beasts.  TIMESTAMP  is just a  server-wide monotonically increasing value; it 
has nothing to do with time.  The server receives a DATETIME as a structure 
of 2 4-byte integers, whereas timestamps (which it never *receives*) are 
little SYBBINARY types.  

> I'm sending timestamps as SYBDATETIME, and it almost works.  The
> timestamps look exactly right in tsql.  In Crystal Reports' "Query
> Generator", the value does show as a timestamp, and I think the date
> is correct but it is truncated at 8 characters.  For example, I see
> "2004-04-" when I expect to see "2004-04-12 08:15:00".  The column
> seems to have the right width, but the displayed values are just too
> short.

It sounds like it might be a binding/conversion problem.  Wherever the 
datetime structure is converted to a string, said string has to be large 
enough to represent the date.  SYBDATETIME is eight bytes, sure, but the 
resultant string is about 20 characters.  

> On the bright side, I've received permission to make my little server
> be open source, so we have that to look forward to.

Oh, that is such excellent news!  The project benefits from your work, and 
you benefit from successive versions of FreeTDS with your work incorporated 
into it (no patching required).  

--jkl











-----------------------------------------
The information contained in this transmission may contain privileged and 
confidential information and is intended only for the use of the person(s) 
named above. If you are not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent 
responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, any 
review, dissemination, distribution or duplication of this communication is 
strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact 
the sender immediately by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original 
message. Please note that we do not accept account orders and/or instructions 
by e-mail, and therefore will not be responsible for carrying out such orders 
and/or instructions.
If you, as the intended recipient of this message, the purpose of which is to 
inform and update our clients, prospects and consultants of developments 
relating to our services and products, would not like to receive further 
e-mail correspondence from the sender, please "reply" to the sender 
indicating your wishes.  In the U.S.: 1345 Avenue of the Americas, New York, 
NY 10105.