Installation guide

mxODBC - Python ODBC Database Interface

• Most other operations work as expected, but please note that the driver is

still under heavy development in some areas. You should test it

thoroughly before using it on a production system.

• The FreeTDS website mentions that the driver has some restrictions.

Please see the FreeTDS user guide

for details.

• Be sure to use the same ODBC manager with FreeTDS as the one you

have compiled it with. If you mix e.g. unixODBC and iODBC, you can

easily run into Unicode data corruption issues. The two ODBC managers

use different default data types for Unicode data, so a FreeTDS ODBC

driver compiled against unixODBC (2-bytes Unicode data type) will not

return correct Unicode data when used with the iODBC ODBC manager

(4-bytes Unicode data type).

• FreeTDS ODBC driver only works natively with DATETIME columns.

DATE and TIME column types introduced in SQL Server 2008 are only

supported via strings. FreeTDS 0.91 accepts them as strings and returns

them as strings. Using mxDateTime values for DATE and TIME fields does

not work. You can use the MS SQL Server Native Client for Linux, if you

need these column types supported, since it does not have this limitation.

• There are other ODBC drivers available from commercial vendors which

implement the full ODBC3 API, including the free MS SQL Server Native

Client for Linux from Microsoft. Alternatively, you can use our mxODBC

Connect product to use the SQL Server Native Client on Windows from

all supported Python platforms and without the need for a client-side

ODBC driver.

• The FreeTDS driver does not support the MARS feature

. Only one active

result set is allowed per connection. If you need the MARS feature, please

have a look at the MS SQL Server Native Client for Linux. This driver also

support the MARS feature. See "Multiple active result sets (MARS) on a

single connection" further up for details.

Example Configuration for Unix

Here is a sample setup for FreeTDS on Linux talking to MS SQL Server 2008 on

Windows:

• Add this section to /usr/local/freetds/etc/freetds.conf (the freetds.conf

configuration file may be in a different location on your machine):

# MS SQL Server 2000 running on server MONET

[MONET]

host = monet.example.net

port = 1433

tds version = 8.0

• Add this section to /etc/odbc.ini (the odbc.ini configuration file may be in

a different location on your machine ). It is also necessary to point

LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the directory where the driver itself is located.

There is work underway to add this feature. See the http://freetds.org/ website.