Re: Empty VARCHAR parameters converted to NULL

The problem is distinguish between null and empty. By definition 0 is null
and - 1 is not accepted. Another negative value could work and a program
could detect of library is FreeTDS or not and use this value (FreeTDS) or 0
(ms or sybase). Libraries do not have same abi so a compile time check
would be fine. Other libraries use 1 as length and fill the byte to a
specific value (like space for varchar and 0 for binaries)
On 17 Mar 2016 03:45, "Joshua Lang" <[email protected]> wrote:

> I assume you're referring to input/output parameters where the input value
> is NULL, but the output value is non-NULL?
>
> The MSDN docs for rpcparam (
> https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa937102(v=sql.80).aspx) don't
> really indicate how this case is handled, but
> I think the following would work for the input/output parameter:
>
> maxlen = <maximum desired length of return value>
> datalen = 0
>
> Basically maxlen is used for the length of the output parameter buffer and
> datalen is the length of the input data.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 4:37 PM, Frediano Ziglio <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > I was looking at this issue. The problem raise when you want a return
> > value but you want to pass a empty or a NULL varchar. How to
> > differentiate in this case? value cannot be NULL for return
> > parameters.
> >
> > Frediano
> >
> >
> > 2016-01-19 18:25 GMT+00:00 Joshua Lang <[email protected]>:
> > > I've read that older versions didn't even support passing 0-length data
> > > (prior to TDS 7.0 I believe). If this could be supported for later
> > versions
> > > of TDS 7.0, that would be great.
> > >
> > > Thanks.
> > >
> > > On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 2:52 AM, Frediano Ziglio <[email protected]>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > >> 2016-01-16 1:41 GMT+00:00 Joshua Lang <[email protected]>:
> > >> > In the latest version of FreeTDS-dblib (0.95.79) I'm passing rpc
> > VARCHAR
> > >> > parameters of 0 length, but non-NULL (empty strings). FreeTDS seems
> to
> > >> turn
> > >> > these into NULL values before passing them on to SQL Server. From
> what
> > >> I've
> > >> > read, it seems as if older databases didn't support passing empty
> > >> strings,
> > >> > but newer ones do? (i.e. TDS 7.0+ do support empty strings).
> > >> >
> > >> > It seems as this is a known issue, but I was wondering if it is
> > possible
> > >> to
> > >> > fix it for the newer versions of SQL server? E.g. in dbrpcparam()
> > >> passing a
> > >> > non-NULL pointer to the 'value' parameter and a 0 to 'datalen' would
> > >> > indicate an empty string is desired if possible.
> > >> >
> > >> > Thoughts?
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> The main problem is not libTDS (the code library) but dbrpcparam
> > >> specification.
> > >> datalen < 0 is invalid for variable fields (like VARCHAR) and 0 is
> used
> > >> for NULL
> > >> value (no matter the data pointer). But looks like your suggestion
> > >> (not NULL value
> > >> and 0 datalen) could be a good choice.
> > >> Not sure however if this could work with all types and server versions
> > >> (for instance
> > >> 0 size TEXT).
> > >> We can do it but I'm not thinking about backporting it to 0.95.
> > >>
> > >> Frediano
> > >> _______________________________________________
> > >> FreeTDS mailing list
> > >> [email protected]
> > >> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/freetds
> > >>
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