FreeTDS Development Group

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

> From: Joseph Geiser
> Sent: July 1, 2004 1:58 PM
> 
> We're running a Linux (Fedora Core 2) server with PHP 4.3.6, 
> FreeTDS 0.62.3 (using TDS 7.0) and unixODBC 2.2.8.  Up to 
> now, we've been running just fine using FreeTDS and the PHP 
> "mssql" db calls with direct queries, but no stored procedures.  
...
> After installing a fresh server (the one described above), we 
> tested FreeTDS and for direct queries, it works just great.  
> For Stored Procedures, if the call is written exactly as it 
> would be written with TSQL/SQLQA, FreeTDS handles it.  
> Straight queries through isql (unixODBC) execute just fine as 
> well, but isql is not handling a Stored Procedure call at 
> all.  In an attempt to code with PHP, it's also failing.

To clarify, the PHP mssql extension uses db-lib, isql uses ODBC, and tsql 
uses the TDS layer directly.   So, you really can't test the mssql extension 
with isql; at least, you're using different client libraries when you do.  

We now have a db-lib test facility: bsqldb, first included in 0.62.3.  (If 
you want a man page, though, get a nightly snapshot.)  The attached script 
works with bsqldb; I'd be curious to know if isql can process it, too.  But: 
all it's doing is T-SQL.  If you use the -v option, bsqldb will show you that 
no parameters are returned as such to the client.  

In the old days, Microsoft servers did return output parameter data when a 
stored procedure was called with "execute" in a T-SQL batch.  Lately they 
don't; the application must use the rpc functions instead.  We have unit test 
that demonstrates how.  

That leaves PHP, which I don't use.  Unless the mssql extension supports the 
db-lib rpc functions -- unless, that is, you see some explicit support for 
stored procedures and parameter binding -- you're not going to be able to 
fetch output parameters.  The workaround is to call a wrapper procedure that 
selects the output values, creating a normal resultset.  

HTH.  

--jkl

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