FreeTDS Development Group

[Brian Bruns <brian.bruns AT gmail.com>]

Not to make a sudden appearance and disagree with Jim, but it largely
depends on your requirements.

If your needs are moderate, and portability isn't an issue then I
agree that dblib is the most approachable API.  But, I usually
recommend ODBC anyway these days, except when the performance overhead
of the driver manager is a problem (almost never), or when special
features like bulk copy are needed.  You just never know when you
might be running another database in the future.

IMNSHO, ctlib gives you all the complexity of ODBC, with none of the
benefits, and is probably useful only for a) porting existing apps and
b) doing things not supported by dblib or ODBC (these exist in the
OpenClient ctlib, but I can't think of a single one that is true for
in FreeTDS).

All that said, the only wrong answer is libtds. ;-)

Brian

On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 15:30:04 -0500, Lowden, James K
<lowdenjk AT bernstein.com> wrote:
> > From: Ellen Spertus
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2004 2:35 PM
> 
> 
> >
> > I'm building an application that will be talking to Microsoft SQL
> > Server and am trying to decide which freetds library to use.  I have a
> > working prototype that uses libtds, but the FAQ recommends using a
> > client library instead (http://freetds.org/faq.html#Which_API).  When
> > considering dblib, I was spooked by the src/dblib/unittests/README
> > file, which says that, as of January 1999, t0003.c is broken.   It
> > made me wonder if dblib and MS SQL do not, in fact, play well
> > together.
> 
> Don't be spooked, Ellen.  I think you'll find that t0003.c works fine
> these days (I know you will).
> 
> IMO, db-lib is the easiest way to get going if you're starting from
> scratch.  It's a matter of opinion, of course.  ct-lib has fewer
> functions, but each one has many options.  ODBC is more complicated to
> set up, and the extra layers of indirection (driver manager,
> generic-ness), make it harder to use.
> 
> We provide db-lib documentation, as do both Microsoft and Sybase,
> online.
> 
> HTH.
> 
> --jkl
> 
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