Re: [Exim] MSSQL / FreeTDS

On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 07:40:12PM +0200, Chris Knipe said:
> >From the exim 3.x days... Has anyone made any progress really in regards to
> getting exim to query MSSQL databases? I have not spent any time on this
> just yet, so feel free to tell me to RTFM...

There are no native MS SQL client libraries for linux, which is the root
of the problem.

> Also, I noticed briefly the new exim 4.23 has support for perl / command
> lookups. From what I understand, it will be possible to do queries to MSSQL
> via a perl script, and use perl modules to access the MSSQL DB?

Again, the lack of drivers is an issue. There has been SOME work on
getting perl to talk to mssql via odbc, and I think there is a
commercial odbc driver that may work, but the problem is that MS is not
releasing the spec for the protocol (business as usual.) There has been
some work in doing a perl relay thing, where perl on linux talks to perl
on Windows which actually uses the windows odbc driver to talk to the
database. Kludge.

It's funnly, I'm currently involved in a project right now with a
similar problem. We actually ended up shitcanning the windows
application and just doing it all on linux with mysql (which just
happens to perform MUCH better too.)

> I just thought I'd ask... We're currently looking at advance integration /
> billing systems, and they are unfortunately windows based... So obviously,
> if my user database moves to windows, I need to be able to access user
> information from my applications...

Maybe you can find one that runs on a different back-end database such
as oracle (since I doubt you will find one that runs on postgres or
mysql)

The other option is to do periodic table dumps from mssql of the needed
data instead of direct database queries. You can also use the mysql
windows odbcdriver to "replicate" the data to a mysql db (again, it
probably won't be real-time.)