$Id: README,v 1.15 2000/11/06 18:59:04 mpeppler Exp $ DBD::Sybase -- a Sybase DBI driver for Perl 5. Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Michael Peppler You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file. WARNING: THIS IS BETA SOFTWARE. This Sybase DBI driver is built using the Sybase OpenClient Client Library (aka CT-library). You will need to have that installed before you can do anything with this package. You will also need Tim Bunce's DBI module, latest release. DBI is available from CPAN, in "CPAN"/authors/id/TIMB/DBI/DBI-1.xx-tar.gz The Sybase OpenClient libraries are of course available from Sybase. For Linux you can get the full Sybase ASE 11.0.3.3 release for free (this includes the server and the client libraries.) See http://linux.sybase.com for details, or my homepage (http://www.mbay.net/~mpeppler). An alternative is to use the FreeTDS reimplementation of Client Library. See http://www.freetds.org for details. DBD::Sybase is a reasonably complete implementation of the DBI spec, but there are still some features that are missing. Please see the DBD::Sybase man page for details. You'll notice that the release numbering has changed between this release and the preceding. I feel that DBD::Sybase is now solid enough to warrant a "beta" release with a target of releasing 1.00 sometime during this winter. Recent changes: Release 0.90 Release number sequence change: I'm dropping the "alpha" qualifier and I expect to release 1.00 fairly soon. Small Makefile.PL fix for Sybase 12.0 installation directory changes. Applied patch from Tim Ayers to allow 0x type formatting for binary data fetches (similar to what Sybase::CTlib and Sybase::DBlib allow). Fixed some t/ scripts to not fail when run against MS-SQL. Corrected the handling of timeout events in the client callback. Bug Fixes: 349: CS_NUMERIC bindings for ?-style placeholders fails for large values. 345: Dynamic statement ids get re-used. 351: prepared statements with placeholders cause handle to become unusable if *first* execute fails. 352: ping() doesn't work right in Apache::DBI (thanks to Kiriakos Georgiou) 353: syb_quoted_identifier doesn't work. 354: Calling fetch() after prepare() but no execute() fails with internal DBI error. This should also fix bug # 278 and 288. 297: type_info() returns incorrect or no data. 344: timeout doesn't work correctly. Release 0.23 Bug Fixes: 331: ? marks in comments are parsed as placeholders. 343: Errors in stored procs cause data rows from proc to be thrown away. 255: $dbh->execute does not fail it executing proc without permissions. Building: This version attempts to find out which libraries it needs by looking at $SYBASE/lib ($SYBASE/$SYBASE_OCS/lib for ASE 12.x installations.) This behaviour is experimental, and will only work on Unix and VMS systems (ie on Win32 you still have to edit the CONFIG file the old way), but appears to work fine on the two systems I have access to (Sybase 11.5/Solaris 7 & Sybase 11.0.3.3/linux) and on Sybase 10.0.2.3/OpenVMS AXP 7.1. It assumes that $SYBASE is set and points to the Sybase installation directory that you want to use to build DBD::Sybase. Start by editing the PWD file to set a valid user, password and server for the test scripts to use. Make sure that the SYBASE environment variable points to the Sybase installation that you want to use for this build. Then run perl Makefile.PL If there were warnings about missing libraries, go to the manual configuration, below. Run make If the make failed, go to the manual configuration, below. Run make test If this succeeds you can install the package, via make install (which you probably have to run as root.) Manual Configuration: If the automatic configuration fails, then you will have to edit the CONFIG file, and set the EXTRA_LIBS entry according to your OS and Sybase release, and then run perl Makefile.PL --file The CONFIG file can be used to set certain system variables that are needed for the build. SYBASE is the root directory of your Sybase installation. DBD::Sybase will use $SYBASE/lib and $SYBASE/include during the build. EXTRA_LIBS lists any extra libraries that are required on your system. For example, Solaris 2.x needs -ltli. See your OS specific documentation supplement from Sybase to determine what is required. DBI_INCLUDE is the directory where DBI installed its include files. Makefile.PL will normally deduce this directory from perl's Config module, so you only need to set this if Makefile.PL fails. LINKTYPE. Uncomment and set to 'static' if you want to build DBD::Sybase statically (ie always included in a new perl binary). Edit PWD, and set the user, password and server that you want to use for the 'make test'. Run perl Makefile.PL, make, make test. If everything's fine, run "make install" to move the files to your installed perl library tree. Known Problems: =============== Solaris 2.x: ----------- On Solaris 2.x make test will fail if LD_LIBRARY_PATH is set and has /usr/lib or /lib before $SYBASE/lib. This is because both Solaris 2.x and Sybase have a library called libintl.so, and if /usr/lib is placed before $SYBASE/lib in LD_LIBRARY_PATH the dynamic loader will search the wrong library when loading DBD::Sybase. In general it is not necessary to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH on Solaris, and it is only rarely necessary to include /usr/lib or /lib in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH as those directories will be searched by default. Linux: ------ If the LANG or LC_ALL environment variable is set and points to an entry that does not exist in $SYBASE/locales/locales.dat (in the [linux] section) then you will get a core dump. This is an OpenClient problem. See http://www.mbay.net/~mpeppler/Linux-ASE-FAQ.html#q1.14 for additional details. The regression tests cover the normal operations, but they are by no means complete, so don't necessarily believe all is fine if the tests succeed... NOTE: t/fail.t will *fail* on test #8 if you are connecting to an 11.0.3.3 server. This is a bug in the server, and not something that I can do anything about, unfortunately. It's a fairly obscure constraint violation condition - read the code if you are interested. I have a simple bug tracking database at http://gw.peppler.org/cgi-bin/bug.cgi You can use it to check for known problems, and to report new ones. Keep in mind that peppler.org lives on the end of a K56 dialup line, so it may be slow. See perldoc DBD::Sybase for details about the package. Comments, criticism, etc. welcome! Michael -- Michael Peppler, Data Migrations, Inc. mpeppler@peppler.org - http://www.mbay.net/~mpeppler