FreeTDS Development Group

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

> [mailto:freetds-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of
> jun_chen AT bankone.com
> Sent: June 10, 2004 11:49 AM
> 
> Oracle support told me that Oracle informed freetds the issue 
> and freetds knew it. 

Did they now?  This is a free software project, and we wear our warts on our 
sleeve.  If you find anything in the mailing list archives from Oracle on 
this topic, then you'll know what you were told was true.  

> describe table <table name> is also a command in IBM DB2.
> In Oracle 9i and up, the command is describe <table name>. 
> Oracle support 
> said the command describe has to work in order for oracle to 
> use the odbc driver.

Google says:
        
        Your search - "describe table" odbc site:microsoft.com - did not 
match any documents.

Can you find it in the ODBC specification?  

I know this: "describe table" is not something any Sybase or Microsoft server 
understands.  Any driver that supported it would have to convert it.  FreeTDS 
does not attempt to interpret any SQL; it merely passes it to the server.  

ODBC defines functions that return table metadata.  

> The version of freetds I'm using is 0.62.3  which I 
> downloaded about one 
> month ago (the stable version).
> I turned on the logging by export 
> TDSDUMP=/admin/home/oracle/freetds.log 
...
> But nothing showed up in freetds.log and odbc.log. How can I 
> turn on the trace in unixodbc and freetds? 

You might try using the "dump file" entry in freetds.conf, unless you're very 
sure that the exported TDSDUMP variable is seen by the process invoking 
FreeTDS.  

> If I run the unixodbc command isql -v peregrine <user name> 
> <password> and 
> then the following command describe table scProblem,
> here is the log freetds.log.

And it shows exactly what we'd expect: an Incorrect Syntax error returned 
from the server, because "describe" is not a T-SQL keyword.  

In sum, Jun, this is how I see it:

1.  The next time someone at Oracle claims to have "told FreeTDS" anything, 
see if you can get, oh, a date or a name.  I'd remember any engagement on 
this list from anyone at Oracle, and I think you were buffaloed.  

2.  "Describe table" won't work, no way, no how, with FreeTDS.  It's not in 
the ODBC specification, and I doubt any ODBC driver for any TDS database 
supports it.  

3.  FreeTDS has been used successfully between Oracle and Microsoft/Sybase 
servers.  I don't know the details, but it was discussed this year on this 
list.  

4.  When you're connected to Oracle and issue a "describe table" command 
targetting a table on an ODBC-linked server, Oracle has to do some mediation 
(if it's going to support that).  Oracle will interpret the SQL, and use 
standard ODBC functions to extract the metadata from the driver.  In no event 
will it simply fob off the SQL to the downstream server.  

I hope that clears things up somewhat.  

--jkl

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