Re: gda-sybase: Ongoing developement in cvs

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo linuxave net>]

> 
> 
> On 30 Oct 2000, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> 
> > so, Brian, please enlighten us on this issue (the use of the TDS protocol and
> > the implementation of the less possible providers).
> > 
> > What do you suggest?
> 
> Ok, TDS which is the wire-level protocol comes in three basic flavors:
> 
> 4.2, the oldest in use version supported by both Sybase and Microsoft in
>      all dataservers.
> 5.0, Extensions made by Sybase in ASE 10.x and above.  Adds cursors,
>      placeholders and some other stuff.
> 7.0, Extensions made by MS in SQL Server 7.0.  Adds unicode and long
>      char/varchar types (chars with more than 255 bytes)
> 
> Sybase OpenClient supports versions 4.2 and 5.0.  Microsofts dblib
> supports only 4.2.  Microsofts ODBC and OLE-DB support 4.2 and 7.0.
> FreeTDS supports all three protocol versions, with the exception that
> unicode is not currently handled but could be added as multibyte charset
> support is added.
> 
> Some ctlib/dblib programs are likely to break on receiving char types of
> more than 255 characters. This is a problem with the program making
> assumption about the length and not a limitation of the ctlib or dblib
> APIs.  So not a problem here.
> 
> On choosing ctlib vs. dblib, either one would do just fine.  The big
> question is the trade off between portability back to MS dblib (under
> Windows) or support for those items that are new in ctlib.
> 
> I would recommend that the current sybase driver should work against MS 
> SQL Server almost transparently when using freetds.  Although you may want
> to consider an alias or more neutral name so people get the point.
> 
so, you're saying that with only ONE provider we'll cover everything? In that
case, the gda-sybase-server will be removed and replaced by a more-generic
gda-tds-server provider.

Of course, as you already said some time ago, in the docs there should be
specific stuff about how to set it up for Sybase/MS SQL access.

If we all agree on this (specially Brian), Holger, just start whenever you
want with the tds provider, and as soon as it works with sybase, remove 
the gda-sybase-server.

cheers