Sybase Client 10.0.4.0 Alpha

[JerryK]

Is there an Integrity Sysbase Client available? Is there anything else that is close? Has anyone tried translating the Alpha sybase client executable into an Integrity sybase client executable?

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

No.

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1024242

But report if you get it running after translation.

WIm

[Craig A Berry · Accepted solution]

We're now using FreeTDS instead of the old Sybase clients. Assuming you have a C compiler and either MMS or MMK, grab the stable release from here and give it a try:

http://www.freetds.org

We're still on Alpha, but I know of no reason FreeTDS wouldn't build on IA64. For our needs, we hacked together some command parsing wrappers so that we could continue to use the VMS-style isql and bcp commands, but if you just need the object libraries, you should be able to use those exactly as you currently use the Sybase versions.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Is this complete ?

ISQL ? BCP ? DEFNCOPY ? Language support ?

Compatible with Sybase API (the .h files etc) ? Or just a way to access the database (thus requiring a rewrite of the application) ?

Wim (confused)

[Ian Miller.]

There is also a FreeTDS library at

http://starlet.deltatel.ru/~laishev/work/freetds/

[Craig A Berry]

Wim, FreeTDS has ctlib and dblib, which are the documented APIs that have been part of Sybase for a long time. There is also an ODBC driver included (though building it is optional). So you have three APIs to choose from, if that's what you mean by "language support." BTW, headers are included for all of these APIs.

FreeTDS speaks all versions of the TDS (Tabular DataStream) protocol used by Sybase and Microsoft database servers. There are about three different ways (build option, configuration setting, environment setting) to control which version you get, all covered in the documentation.

As far as utilities go, it does have tsql and freebcp, which are pretty much drop-in replacements for the unix versions of isql and bcp, and it also has defncopy. Something we've done where I work but I haven't submitted patches for yet is VMS command wrappers around tsql and bcp so you can preserve existing command procedures (and user habits ;-)). In case that's not clear, I mean being able to say, for example

$ ISQL/SERVER_NAME=server/USER=user/PASS=pass

instead of

$ tsql -"Sserver" -"Uuser" -"Ppass"

So when you ask whether FreeTDS is complete, it is both more complete and less complete than the old Sybase clients. It has more different APIs and speaks to more different versions of database servers from both Microsoft and Sybase. So in that sense it's more complete. If your software makes calls to ctlib or dblib, then you're probably set.

But from the point of view of the client utilities (not the client libraries), FreeTDS is not quite a drop-in replacement for the Sybase clients, but is getting to be more so.

I think for any VMS Sybase users with client-only (not server) applications, FreeTDS is probably the most viable option for going to IA64.

Ian, Ruslan's port of FreeTDS is pretty out of date. He was the first to do it, but over the last few years my patches to incorporate VMS build support into the main source repository have all been accepted by the maintainers, so it's been there since about version 0.61 (current is 0.64, I think).

[JerryK]

Thank you. We have some things to try.