Update to a newer FreeTDS

Thank you for your report

This package comes from Debian, can you please contain its maintainers (they are listed here: http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/freetds), or file a bug report in Debian BTS, and then paste its URL here?

Looks like there is already a bug report in Debian BTS: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=642069

I will attempt to contact the maintainers to see what the status is.

On Tue, Nov 08, 2011 at 05:19:32PM -0000, Dan VerWeire wrote:
> Looks like there is already a bug report in Debian BTS:
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=642069

> I will attempt to contact the maintainers to see what the status is.

No need, I'm sitting right here ;P

The current status is that, although I'm interested in continuing to
maintain freetds, I currently have no standing access to a MS SQL server
against which to test it. This makes it somewhat awkward to update the
package to a new upstream version, particularly given that there are some
Debian-local patches (locale handling) that would need to be forward-ported
and ought to be tested before upload.

So I'm currently working on resolving my lack of MS SQL access, but it's a
low priority for me. If someone happened to be able to provide me remote
access to a SQL server for testing, I could ensure this update happens more
quickly.

--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
<email address hidden> <email address hidden>

This bug was fixed in the package freetds - 0.91-1

---------------
freetds (0.91-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New upstream release. Closes: #852069, LP: #887374.
    - Built with new libtool, so should be compatible with binutils-gold.
      Closes: #558548.
    - Includes fix for upstream corruption seen with Hebrew strings.
      Closes: #500451.
    - drop patch to src/tds/locale.c; upstream seems to now support fairly
      complete autodetection of the client locale.
    - update symbols files for two new symbols.
  * Pass -DDBLIB_UNIMPLEMENTED=1 so we get a full set of symbols in
    libsybdb, even if some functions are not yet implemented.
  * Switch to using dpkg-buildflags for hardening.
  * src/apps/bsqldb.c: fix a build failure with -Werror=format-security.
  * Build-depend on libgnutls-dev for TLS support. LP: #406468.
  * Build-depend on libreadline-dev, which makes freetds-bin a bit more
    useful.
 -- Ubuntu Archive Auto-Sync <email address hidden> Fri, 25 Nov 2011 10:06:37 +0000

While it is nice to have a more recent version of FreeTDS, it does break the very OLD python-pymssql and python-pyodbc packages.

python-pymssql (1.0.2+dfsg-1build1)
python-pyodbc (2.1.7-1build2)

python-pyodbc struggles with unicode decoding problems (TDS_Version = 8.0).
TDS_Version = 9.0 delivers correct query results but sqlalchemy will then try to use unavailable features, like sys.indexes, on MSSQL Server 2000/2005.

sqlalchemy fails silently with `mssql+pyodbc://`, which is worse than failing with an error.

python-mssql can no longer make a connection and sqlalchemy `mssql+pymssql://` fails with an error.

The attached script checks FreeTDS/pyodbc/pymssql/sqlalchemy.

The logs for oneiric and precise-fixed (with pymssql + pyodbc installed via easy_install) show the correct results.

The log for precise with system packages python-pymssql and python-pyodbc show the failures.

@Wolfgang

How are the most recent versions of pyodbc (3.0.X) doing on this front? Do they work?

I jsut did

# apt-get remove python-pyodbc python-pymssql
# easy_install pyodbc pymssql

This gave me:

# :DBG: pyodbc.version : ]3.0.3[
# :DBG: pymssql.__version__: ]2.0.0[

More precisely:

pyodbc-3.0.3-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg
pymssql-2.0.0b1_dev_20111019-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg

They work just fine.

However, pymssql used to be able to take reference to a configration entry in /etc/freetds/freetds.conf, which seems to be no longer supported. Since an explicit server name works, I can live with that.

I don't see a bug on Launchpad to update Ubuntu's pyodbc and pymssql to work with the new freetds.

What should be done on that front?

I would say, the maintainer(s) should make the decision.

Since the current combination of freetds/pyodbc/pymssql is definitely broken, I would say, either create dependencies of pyodbc and pymssql on the previous version of freetds (and downgrade freedts), or update pyodbc and pymssql to the current stable releases.

I personally prefer the latter option, since it fixes many UNICODE issues for pyodbc. However, it does require modifications in existing projects, when pymssql is used with freedts configuration references.

Another solution would be to allow for both options, namely old and new freetds/pyodbc/pymssql packages.

Should l create bug reports for pyodbc/pymssql also to expedite the process?

https://gist.github.com/msabramo/6501240 fixes pymssql 1.0.2