FreeTDS Development Group

[entropy AT freetds.org]

James K. Lowden wrote:
> Unless you've been paying close attention, you probably haven't noticed we
> have a new utility in src/apps called "fisql".  It's a featureful db-lib
> based isql, contributed (to the public domain?) by Nick Castellano.  We

Contributed to The FreeTDS Project under the GNU GPL and or LGPL (I see 
FreeTDS distributes both COPYING and COPYING.LIB, and I'd be happy to 
apply either to fisql as you think appropriate).

> now have a complete set of developer tools: isql, freebcp, and defncopy. 
> In addition, we have tsql for low-level testing and bsqldb for batch
> processing.  Not bad!  
>
> Nick, before another day goes by, I want to publicly thank you, if I may,
> on behalf of the community!  Your timing couldn't have been better,
> either, as you probably know.  Having fixed the error handling in db-lib,
> I was publicly musing about the utility of dbsetinterrupt(), and the next
> thing I know an application that uses it shows up in CVS.  You can imagine
> my surprise.  

It's no coincidence.  Your work on dbsetinterrupt() removed the last 
major impediment to my contributing this code, so I went ahead and did it.

> I must be doing something wrong, though, because on my machine fisql
> resolutely refuses to print data:
>
> $ printf 'select 1 as one\ngo\n' | src/apps/fisql/fisql -S $S -U $U -P $P
> Msg 5701, Level 10, State 2:
> Server 'test', Changed database context to 'FreeTDS'.
>
> one         
>         
> ----------- 
>         
> ----------- 
>         
>
> (1 rows affected)
>
>         
> Either I forgot something obvious, or I've got more debugging to do....

The application was written and used for years with Sybase libraries.  I 
noticed it isn't really working yet with FreeTDS but I haven't had time 
to poke at it yet.

I guess either FreeTDS can be adjusted to work with this app (which 
would improve our compatibility with Sybase), or the app can be tweaked 
to work better with FreeTDS as currently implemented.  Hopefully once 
the problems are understood it will be obvious which is the best path 
forward.

Since I'm a bit time-limited these days it might take me a while to get 
to it.  In the spirit of free software, others are more than welcome to 
take a look and try to get it working.

Other issues needing attention:

- I don't think it even tries to handle compute rows.

- readline is required.  In fact, I wrote this program because I hated 
using Sybase's isql which has no command history.  We should probably do 
something to support building without readline, or at least skip 
building fisql when readline is not available.

> I added a man page for fisql.  I wonder about the name, though: the "Fine
> Interactive SQL"  tool?

Thanks for the man page.  It used to be nisql (Nick's ISQL) but upon 
contributing it to FreeTDS I decided it should be called Free ISQL.

--
Cheers,
entropy