InstallingFreeTDS

Introduction

This page will help you set up FreeTDS (an open-source driver for accessing Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase database servers). Make sure you have properly installed unixODBC before following this guide.

TDS Versions

The TDS protocol (the protocol Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase use) knows a lot of different versions. FreeTDS needs to know which version to use when connecting to a database. The following table details the different TDS versions:

Microsoft SQL Server 2008	7.2
Microsoft SQL Server 2005	7.2
Microsoft SQL Server 2000	7.1
Microsoft SQL Server 7.0	7.0
Sybase System SQL Anywhere	5.0
Sybase System 10 and above	5.0
Sybase before System 10, Microsoft SQL Server 6.x	4.2

You can build FreeTDS with a default version or you can specify the TDS version in the connection string.

Compile FreeTDS with a default version

Easy, when installing FreeTDS (see below) substitute the following command:

$ ./configure

With:

$ ./configure --with-tdsver=VER

Where VER is the version you want to use (see table above). However, I have found that this doesn't always work. Should you encounter problems, specify the protocol version in the connection string.

Specify protocol version in connection string

This can be necessary if you need to connect to different servers which use different protocol versions.

I'll use the unit-test that comes with odbc as an example. In mssql_test.go, find the section that says:

params = map[string]string{
    "driver":   "freetds",
    "server":   *mssrv,
    "port":     "1433",
    "database": *msdb,
    "uid":      *msuser,
    "pwd":      *mspass,
    //"clientcharset": "UTF-8",
    //"debugflags": "0xffff",
}

Change it to add the TDS_Version section like so:

params = map[string]string{
    "driver":   "freetds",
    "server":   *mssrv,
    "port":     "1433",
    "database": *msdb,
    "uid":      *msuser,
    "pwd":      *mspass,
    "TDS_Version": "7.2",
    //"clientcharset": "UTF-8",
    //"debugflags": "0xffff",
}

I used TDS version 7.2 in this example

Actually installing FreeTDS

Download FreeTDS:

$ wget ftp://ftp.astron.com/pub/freetds/stable/freetds-stable.tgz

Extract FreeTDS:

$ tar xf freetds-stable.tgz 

Compile and install FreeTDS:

$ cd freetds-0.91/
$ ./configure #Optionally specify TDS version here with --with-tdsver=VER
$ make
$ sudo make install

Now FreeTDS has been built, but unixODBC still needs to know about it. To do that, put the following in a text file:

[FreeTDS] 
Description     = Open source FreeTDS driver
Driver          =/usr/local/lib/libtdsodbc.so

Save it as anything you would like (I use tds.driver.template) and then run:

$ sudo odbcinst -i -d -f tds.driver.template

odbcinst: Driver installed. Usage count increased to 1.

Target directory is /usr/local/etc

You can now use FreeTDS from your Go projects.

Troubleshooting

This section is intended for any problems you may encounter when following the above guide.

FreeTDS: TDS_Version auto-recognition not working

If you see something similar to:

[unixODBC][FreeTDS][SQL Server]Unexpected EOF from the server

[unixODBC][FreeTDS][SQL Server]Adaptive Server connection failed

when running tests then freetds fails to detect the version of the TDS-protocol your server is using. This can be fixed in two ways. See the section on default TDS version above.