MS SQL connectivity

[Hans Nowak]

Joakim Ziegler wrote:
> I'm currently faced with the... interesting task of talking to an MS SQL
> Server 8.0 database running on W2k, from Python running on GNU/Linux. 

MS SQL 8.0, that's the same as 2000, right? If so, you might consider using 
SQLXML. You talk to the server through HTTP, sending either a GET statement 
with an "URL" containing SQL, or a POST statement with an updategram containing 
SQLXML. The result set also comes back as XML.

This way of working is very portable, and you need no drivers, but it's not 
perfect. NULL values are by default excludes from the result set (although you 
can change this), and posting binary data would be a bit of a problem. Also, 
you'll need to write your own basic set of functions/methods to talk to it with 
Python, interpret the results, etc.

If you can't get any of the other methods to work, this may be something to 
consider.

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