<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Ambitious ideas</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.79"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="FreeTDS User Guide" HREF="index.htm"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="Helping" HREF="contrib.htm"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Light another's taper" HREF="light.taper.htm"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Advocacy" HREF="advocacy.htm"><LINK REL="STYLESHEET" TYPE="text/css" HREF="userguide.css"><META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=utf-8"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" ><SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >FreeTDS</SPAN > User Guide: A Guide to Installing, Configuring, and Running <SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >FreeTDS</SPAN ></TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="light.taper.htm" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >Chapter 10. Helping</TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="advocacy.htm" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="AMBITION" >Ambitious ideas</A ></H1 ><P >If you want to get your hands really dirty, here are some big ideas to contemplate. </P ><DIV CLASS="SECT2" ><H2 CLASS="SECT2" ><A NAME="AEN3422" ><TT CLASS="LITERAL" >libtds2</TT ></A ></H2 ><P >After many years developing <SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >FreeTDS</SPAN >, we've learned quite a bit about the protocol and how to write database libraries. Unfortunately, though, one of the things holding us back — and, obviously hampering the project — is the underlying utility library.</P ><P >This wouldn't be a from-scratch effort; most of the code is already written. What's needed is a more uniform API that better reflects the TDS protocol, and that does <SPAN CLASS="emphasis" ><I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >not</I ></SPAN > attempt character set conversions immediately on receipt of the data. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT2" ><H2 CLASS="SECT2" ><A NAME="AEN3429" ><TT CLASS="LITERAL" >libstddb</TT ></A ></H2 ><P >This would be a new client library modelled after <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >stdio</TT >, a project to demonstrate what database programming should be like. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT2" ><H2 CLASS="SECT2" ><A NAME="AEN3434" >Server code</A ></H2 ><P ><SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >FreeTDS</SPAN > includes a little stub of a server, but it could be much more useful. One idea would be to make it a front-end to SQLite, thereby creating for the first time a TDS client & server pair composed entirely of free software. </P ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="light.taper.htm" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.htm" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="advocacy.htm" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Light another's taper</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="contrib.htm" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Advocacy</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >