In coming months, we'll be gradually shipping Release 7.0 of all our UDA drivers. This post will be the first of many, describing some of the fixes, changes, and improvements in each driver as they are made available.

Today, we have the Lite Edition ODBC Drivers for Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server.

Installation and configuration takes only minutes, by following the documentation which remains available anytime, specifically for this driver on OS X and Windows.

Release 7.0 licenses are also available for immediate purchase.

Client Platform Support

Release 7.0 installers are available for immediate download for Mac and Windows. Builds for Linux and other Unix-like OS will be available soon; please contact us if you have urgent need.

Release 7.0 supports all 32-bit and 64-bit ODBC client tools and applications, both GUI and command-line, on —

DBMS Version Support

The Release 7.0 Lite Edition ODBC Driver supports virtually every version of Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase Adaptive Server in current use, including —

Changes since Release 6.x

Additions

• added support for SPARSE columns in SQLColumns() call

• added DSN options SHOWSPARSECOLS / ShowSparseCols and Multi-Tier connect option -X )

• details, based on test table:

       
  CREATE TABLE tbl_sparse_test 
    ( col1  INT SPARSE
    , col2  INT
    , col3  XML COLUMN_SET FOR ALL_SPARSE_COLUMNS 
    )
  
       
      

  • wildcard query will return only col2 and col3; will not include SPARSE columns. This is standard SQL Server behavior, and it cannot be changed.

           
    SELECT * 
      FROM tbl_sparse_test
      ;
    
           
          

    To include SPARSE columns in results, they must be explicitly SELECTed

           
    SELECT col1, col2, col3 
      FROM tbl_sparse_test
      ;
    
           
          

  • By default, calls to SQLColumns() don't return Sparse Columns. To receive full columns list:

    • via our Lite Edition ODBC driver —

      1. open connection with SHOWSPARSECOLS in DSN connection string, e.g., "DSN=TdsSQL;UID=sa;PWD=sa;SHOWSPARSECOLS=Y;"

      2. SQLColumns (hstmt, NULL, 0, NULL, 0, L"tbl_sparse_test", SQL_NTS, NULL, 0 );

    • via the Microsoft ODBC driver —

      1. SQLSetStmtAttr (hstmt, SQL_SOPT_SS_NAME_SCOPE, (SQLPOINTER)SQL_SS_NAME_SCOPE_EXTENDED, SQL_IS_SMALLINT);

      2. SQLColumns (hstmt, L"tempdb", SQL_NTS, L"dbo", SQL_NTS, L"tbl_sparse_test", SQL_NTS, NULL, 0 );

• added support for new SQL Server datatypes such as datetime2

• added support for NBCROW token

• added support for Sybase 15

  • added support for BIGDATETIME and BIGTIME

  • added support for UNITEXT

  • added support for UNSIGNED BIGINT

Fixes

• fixed issue with SQL Server BIT datatype

• fixed memory overwrite error, when DB procedure is called with SQL_PARAM_OUTPUT parameter of CHAR/VARCHAR/LONGVARCHAR

• fixed issue with VARBINARY datatype and DB procedures

• fixed issue with converting TIMESTAMP to CHAR/WCHAR

• fixed datatype info in SQLGetTypeInfo -- new Sybase and MSSQL datatypes were added

• fixed database catalog and query metadata info for Sybase 15's UNSIGNED INT, UNSIGNED SMALLINT, BIGINT, SYSNAME, LONGSYSNAME