[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk community input: FreeTDS (cdr_tds.c) or unixODBC (cdr_unixodbc.c) ?

[Steven Critchfield]

On Fri, 2003-08-01 at 09:17, Erik Anderson wrote:
> I would like some Asterisk community input:
> 
> It was requested of me to create an Asterisk FreeTDS (cdr_tds.c) module to
> allow Asterisk to populate MS SQL Server (and Sybase) with CDR records.

> For cdr_tds.c
> Asterisk -> cdr_tds.c -> FreeTDS -> TDS Database
> 
> For cdr_unixodbc.c
> Asterisk -> cdr_unixodbc.c -> unixODBC -> FreeTDS -> TDS Database
> or
> Asterisk -> cdr_unixodbc.c -> unixODBC -> (unixODBC driver for DB) ->
> Database (Oracle, Sybase, MS SQL Server, MySQL, Postgres, etc...)
> 
> FreeTDS already has a unixODBC driver (libtdsodbc.so) so for our needs we
> can use FreeTDS directly or through a additional abstraction with unixODBC.
> 
> Currently in Asterisk is the support for a CDR CSV (cdr_csv.c), cdr_mysql.c,
> and I saw on the list a few weeks ago cdr_sybase.c
> 
> What would help the Asterisk community the most?  Is there really a demand
> out there for anything other than
> MySQL
> CSV flat file
> TDS (Sybase and MS SQL Server)
> 
> I have never heard the words Oracle or Postgres thrown around so I am
> wondering if there is a justifiable need to support such systems.

Yes for postgres. You will have a tough sell for the oracle route
because of licensing unless there is a free interface available.

> I will do TDS.  That is a given.  However, before I go off and create
> something, I want the Asterisk community input as to what their needs are.
> 
> Our needs:
> Asterisk to populate a CDR table in MS SQL Server


Something that may need to be thought out, we seem to run into this
database interface problem regularly enough. Is it time that the
database access get moved to a resource and then the extensions
app_sql_postgres.c could be made into just a sql app that works with any
backend database. Also the CDR stuff could use the same interface to
write out it's logs. Of course the biggest problem I see is that there
isn't a fully set up perl DBI/DBD drivers for C yet. The libdbi library
is still short a few critical drivers for what has been mentioned here,
specifically CSV and MS SQL. 

-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>