README for FreeTDS 0.82
Thusday 10 January 2008

* to build FreeTDS read the file INSTALL or
  the FreeTDS Users Guide (doc/userguide.tgz) and 
  http://www.freetds.org/userguide/

FreeTDS is a free implementation of Sybase's db-lib,
ct-lib, and ODBC libraries. FreeTDS builds and runs on every flavor of
unix-like systems we've heard of, as well as Win32 (with or without
Cygwin), VMS, and Mac OS X.  Failure to build on your system is probably
considered a bug.  It has C language bindings, and works also with Perl
and PHP, among others.  

FreeTDS is licensed under the GNU LGPL license. See COPYING.LIB for
details.  

Other files you might want to peruse:

AUTHORS		Who's involved
BUGS		Some things we fixed, or think we did
ChangeLog	Detailed list of changes
NEWS		Summary of feature changes and fixes
README		This file
TODO		The roadmap, such as it is

Also, doc/api_status.txt shows which functions are implemented.  

For details on what's new in this version, see NEWS.  For unbearable 
detail, see ChangeLog-0.82.

Documentation
=============

A User Guide, in sgml and html form, is included in this distribution. 
Also included is a reference manual, generated in HTML with Doxygen. 
"make install" installs the HTML documentation, by default to
/usr/local/share/doc/freetds-<version>.  


Note to Users
=============

Submissions of test programs (self-contained programs that demonstrate
functionality or problems) are greatly appreciated.  They should
create any tables needed (since we obviously don't have access to your
database) and populate them.  Unit tests for any of the libraries
is appreciated

Notes to Developers
===================

The code is split into several pieces.

1) tds directory is the wire level stuff, it should be independent of
   the library using it, this will allow db-lib, ct-lib, and ODBC to
   sit on top.

2) db-lib directory. This is the actual db-lib code which runs on top of
   tds.

3) ct-lib directory. This is the ct-lib code which runs on top of tds. 

4) server directory. This will be a set of server routines basically
   to impersonate a dataserver, functions like send_login_ack() etc...

5) odbc directory. ODBC implementation over tds.  Uses iODBC or
   unixODBC as a driver manager.  You need to have one of those if you
   are using the ODBC CLI.

6) unittests directories. Test harness code for ct-lib, db-lib, ODBC and
   libtds.

6) samples directories. Sample code for getting started with Perl,
   PHP, etc...

7) pool directory. A connection pooling server for TDS.  Useful if you
   have a connection limited license.  Needs some hacking to get
   configured but is quite stable once configured correctly. Contact
   the list if interested in how to use it.

Please look at doc/getting_started.txt for a description of what is
going on in the code.

Side note: Brian, as many free software authors, appreciates postcards
from all over. So if you live someplace neat (read: not Michigan) and
want to send one, email him (brian@bruns.org) for his current snail mail
address.

$Id: README,v 1.12 2008/01/11 08:30:10 freddy77 Exp $