FreeTDS User Guide: A Guide to Installing, Configuring and Running FreeTDS | ||
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In early 1997, the only option for connecting to a Sybase dataserver from Linux or other free systems was an aging Sybase-released version of OpenClient. Unfortunately it had a few problems. The original release was a.out based, although Greg Thain did a great service in converting the library to ELF. Secondly, it included only the newer ct-lib API. The older db-lib API was missing.
Brian Bruns, a Sybase DBA and originator of the FreeTDS project, had some db-lib programs he wanted to run under Linux, and thus began the FreeTDS project. The original work focused on db-lib and version 5.0 of the protocol, but quickly expanded to include a ct-lib compatible layer and TDS version 4.2. Later support for ODBC and TDS 7.0 and 8.0 was added. Craig Spannring wrote a Java JDBC driver which became FreeTDS/JDBC.