FreeTDS Development Group

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden AT freetds.org>]

Sebastien FLAESCH wrote:
> 
> FreeTDS comes with Sybase (TDS) headers (sqlfront.h, sybfront.h, etc)
> so why don't you provide ODBC headers?

Hi Sebastien, 

With the db-lib and ct-lib headers, there's no choice.  No other free
implementation exists, and no independent standard exists.  

With the ODBC headers, the DM projects maintain free implementations of an
independent standard.  Using them avoids confusion at install time.  It's
less work for us, and keeps us "honest" in the sense that we have to be
strictly compatible with their declarations.  

> But what if I don't want to use a driver manager? This is critical
> in our case, when a lot of application servers have to be installed
> = need to minimize deployment costs, and if we can avoid to install
> UnixODBC, it's fine!

I'm surprised that works for you, frankly.  The ODBC specs define quite a
bit of work for the DM.  Among other things, it synthesizes ODBC 3.0
functions for use with ODBC 2.0 drivers.  I would think using unixODBC
would simplify your life as an application programmer.  That was the idea
in the first place.  

In any case, folks like you know what you're doing.  You don't have to
install unixODBC to get the .h files; you can just unpack it and copy
them.  Easy to find, easy to update, easy to package with your
application.  

Regards, 

--jkl