FreeTDS Development Group

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

> Frediano Ziglio wrote:
> > Il giorno sab, 13/09/2008 alle 16.51 -0400, James K. Lowden 
> ha scritto:
> > > First: What do we mean by "wide"?  UCS-2?  UTF-16?  
> UCS-4?  UTF-8?  Is
> > > it compile-time dependent?  Run-time?  
> > 
> > It depends from DM... unixODBC use UCS-2 while iODBC use wchar_t
> > (usually UCS-4 on Unix.. or not?? I'm not sure, certainly Linux use
> > UCS-4). Using unixODBC there is a configuration flags to 
> use wchar_t but
> > usually is not enabled
> 
> OK, so it's a compile-time setting.  
> 
> > > I see a
> > > reference to a "ODBC 3.5 (or later) Unicode Driver".  Is that what
> > > we're building?  
> > 
> > Yes, in a future (not very far) yes
> 
> OK. 
> 
> > Unicode driver means that all ANSI version have a
> > corresponding unicode version (like SQLExecDirectW for 
> SQLExecDirect).
> > The change is interpret characters as wide instead of ANSI.
> 
> I see.  So a Unicode appliction calls SQLExecDirectW, or does a
> preprocessor macro convert it, something like:
> 
>       #if UNICODE
>       #define SQLExecDirect SQLExecDirectW
>       #endif
> 
> ??
> 

Yes

> > > Fourth: Can you show me the API function call sequence that mixes
> > > encodings for a single column?  
> > 
> > I never tried but I think reading TEXT/NTEXT with 
> SQLGetData changing
> > SQL_C_CHAR/SQL_C_WCHAR for the same column.
> 
> The app can call SQLBindCol in between calls to SQLFetch, too:  
> 
>       "A column can be bound, unbound, or rebound at any 
> time, even after data
> has been fetched from the result set. The new binding takes effect the
> next time that a function that uses bindings is called."
> (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms711010(VS.85).aspx)
> 

Yes, it's correct... however using SQLGetData you don't have a bind active. 

> > > Maybe it would be easier to create a BRANCH_UNICODE branch in CVS 
> > 
> > I would
> > prefer a "from XXX date code is quite broken so if you want 
> to use CVS
> > use cvs co -D XXX". 
> 
> OK.  Maybe just a CVS tag UNICODE_BASE or something like 
> that, so we don't
> have to remember the date.  
> 
> As long as db-lib and ct-lib remain useable in CVS HEAD, I'm happy.  I
> intend to change tds_connect() for example, so broken code 
> would be bad.  
> 

I did the branch however currently changes to code are very limited and still 
"#if
ENABLE_DEVELOPMENT" marked.

> > To be sure we could branch and continue working on CVS 
> HEAD, having a
> > BRANCH_NOUNICODE. Branch and merging is heavy on CVS, this way main
> > changes will go to the no-branch.
> 
> We can do that later if HEAD becomes too unstable to use.  
> 
> > The problem with "convert nearest the wire" is that at the 
> moment libTDS
> > fetch data and fill row buffer it doesn't know which encode 
> the client
> > wants (SQL_C_CHAR or SQL_C_WCHAR). 
> 
> Understood.  
> 
> > All that stuff suggest me "direct binding"... 
> 
> Right.  Convert at the ODBC<->libtds boundary.  
> 

Yes, from TODOs I can see:
- Upper layer should be able to read data from network and handle rows
- Possibility to stop sending/receiving data for SQLPutData and similar
- limit copy of data (now wire -> tds -> temp -> client)
  use a method like zero-copy
  In token.c getting row should write data even to client
  (callback, new user types, see ctlib conversion functions)
  In query.c writing data do the same (use additional column fields?)

I think I'll start implementing some of them... I think that we should have 
an option
where libTDS could stop before columns/parameters and return data as streams. 
Something
like tds_read_data(tds, buffer, size). Perhaps it would be better to define 
even a
structure like TDSSTREAM with a read "method". So even tdsconvert could use 
this
structure. Well.. this would give to libTDS the possibility to return data, 
even
chunked/blob without allocating any data. You should ask me why it helps with 
ODBC...
well... it helps with SQLGetData :). I discovered that SQLGetData can return
*StrLen_or_IndPtr as SQL_NO_TOTAL. This help me in situations where you have 
to convert
for instance big5->ucs2 or similar. There are issues as some client call 
SQLGetData with
BufferLength == 0 to determine the size to allocate but this is not my 
problem :). Another
note for blob1 test... I changed it to align behavior to MS one but I think 
that MS
behavior is not correct :(. From documentation: "If the length of character 
data
(including the null-termination character) exceeds BufferLength, SQLGetData 
truncates the
data to BufferLength less the length of a null-termination character. It then
null-terminates the data.", actually MS can truncate data using less bytes 
due to
conversion binary -> char, for instance passing 0x010203 and a BufferLength 
of 4
(SQL_C_CHAR) documentation state it should return "012" (terminated) but MS 
actually
returns "01" (terminated). So test was correct... I'll rollback change if 
nobody disagree.

> > how to implement all new datatypes of mssql2005 and mssql2008 ?? One
> > problem with mssql2005 is the VARCHAR(MAX) which can be very large,
> > something like SYBLONGCHAR/SYBBLOB of Sybase (still not 
> that supported).
> 
> I haven't thought about this very much.  I know that for 
> zero-copy, the
> client library must provide the target buffer into which 
> libtds places the
> data.  
> 

IMO there are two way to implement it:
- libTDS store in buffer provided by client
- client read data from libTDS directly (like using streams above)

Actually streams are not the easy cause client must be able to
- read size if available. Think BLOBs, mainly they have a size that is passed 
before all
data, but chunked versions (like VARCHAR(MAX) which I would like to implement 
or SYBBLOB
Sybase type) can have no initial size
- discard pending data (for truncation and similar)

> > I'm currently filling a table of types with flags (like 
> ascii, unicode,
> > fixed and so on) and other informations (varint ms/sybase)
> 
> Excellent.  You might want "cardinal" type, too.  
> 

Yes, I think this is the missing information. The table is now at 
misc/types.txt. There is
a script at misc/types.sh that convert it to CSV and a script at 
src/tds/types.pl that
convert this table to src/tds/types.h which replace some old functions.

I didn't actually a "cardinal type" cause is actually very libTDS bounded. 
Mainly it's
just a fix of conversions to single-bytes and limiting types. 

Well... but what's SYBNVARCHAR type?? Where does this type came?? Is not 
documented in
Sybase so I thik is MS but why having a SYBNVARCHAR if XSYBNVARCHAR is 
available?? From my
memory they introduced nvarchar and types with extended (>255) size at the 
same time...

bye
  freddy77

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