FreeTDS Development Group

["ZIGLIO, Frediano, VF-IT" <Frediano.Ziglio AT vodafone.com>]

> 
> Medi Montaseri wrote:
> > What does FreeTDS API do...what are they good for...can 
> someone give me
> > a two paragraph use case and/or scenario...
> 
> libtds is a collection of low-level functions more than an API.  The
> closest thing you'll find to a packet parser is in src/tds/token.c. 
> You'll find it's highly specialized to reading a TDS stream 
> and populating
> TDSSOCKET structures.  It recognizes tokens, parses packets, 
> and converts
> incoming wire-encoded data to something understandable by the host.  
> 
> The TDS protocol requires the client to maintain state 
> information and to
> stay synchronized with the server.  For the most part, excepting bcp,
> clients don't send much; the work lies in reading the stream. 
>  The client
> doesn't know exactly what to expect -- it's not like reading 
> back a record
> from a file -- and isn't supposed to care very much about the 
> shared state
> information.  So there's no function similar to fread(3), 
> where the client
> specifies a structure to be filled.  Instead, there's a
> structure-about-a-structure, a structure of metadata and 
> another of data,
> that libtds populates as  the information is received.  
> 
> If you're interested in more detail, I suggest you have a look at the
> source code.  Some of the comments and ancillary files might 
> be helpful.  
> 

Also have a look at
http://freetds.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/freetds/freetds/doc/tds.ht
ml

freddy77