FreeTDS Development Group

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

Hi Kara, 

> I'm trying to find some clarification about SQL Server version
> support.  Is SQL Server 2012 supported by FreeTDS at all?  If not,
> what is the latest version of SQL Server that's supported?

The reason it seems unclear is that I write the documentation and
that's not how I think about the question!  

FreeTDS is a client library for a binary protocol.  The latest version
of that protocol it supports IIRC is 7.2 in the release and 7.3 in the
nightly snapshot.  That is the version introduced with SQL Server 2005,
as stated in http://www.freetds.org/userguide/tdshistory.htm.  

So, from the server's point of view, FreeTDS looks like a 2005 client.  

Versus SQL Server 2012 that sounds old, and, like the rest of us, it's
getting older.  But it's pretty useful.  After all, TDS has been around
since 1985 of so, and SQL Servers have been storing umptyump exabytes
ever since.  There just aren't that many new types of data.  

In  the TDS protocol the client announces its version in the login
packet, and the server adapts.  New datatypes -- those not supported by
the TDS version the client is using -- are sent as varchar.  As a
result, your 2005 client can use your 2012 server, with some
constraints surrounding the new datatypes.  

>From that point of view, then, the latest version of the server FreeTDS
supports is the latest version you have.  You generally don't want to
run an old version of the server, because you generally want to stay in
the fat part of Microsoft's adoption curve, because that's where
support really matters.  Your FreeTDS clients won't be able to use
every last feature of the latest server.  When  that matters to enough
people, someone will step forward with a patch to address it. 

I hope that answers your question.  

--jkl