FreeTDS Development Group

[Mike Slifcak <slif AT bellsouth.net>]

Hi,

I've been working about a week with FreeTDS.  The mailing list archive has 
been helpful,
and the documentation is straight forward.
I'm obtaining good results with the FreeTDS driver and Perl DBD-ODBC.

Thank you for all your hard work!

Connecting without issue to MS SQL Server 2000.
The SQL server defines a sysprotects table with a VARBINARY field named 
columns.

Connecting with tsql, a


   SELECT columns from sysprotects


shows a hexadecimal string.
Connecting with Perl DBD-ODBC + FreeTDS, the same SELECT shows a binary 
stream.

I've tried changing the query to


   SELECT CAST(columns as TEXT) from sysprotects


but that is not allowed.


   DBD::ODBC::db prepare failed: [FreeTDS][SQL Server]
      Statement(s) could not be prepared. (SQL-42000)
   [state was 42000 now 22018]


Using Perl DBI 1.616, DBD-ODBC 1.25, FreeTDS 0.82,

and without resorting to post-processing Perl wizardry,
and without writing any SQL server stored procedure (read-only access to 
MSSQL 2000),

Is there some combination of freetds.conf/odbc.ini/odbcinst.ini settings that
can produce a result for VARBINARY as a hexadecimal string?

Does the recent release provide that combination?
Thank you,
-Mike Slifcak