pyodbc/FreeTDS/unixODBC on Debian Linux: issues with TDS Version - sql-server-2008

Question

I'm having a bit of trouble successfully using pyodbc on Debian Lenny (5.0.7). Specifically, I appear to be having trouble fetching NVARCHAR values (not a SQL Server expert, so go easy on me :) ).
Most traditional queries work OK. For instance, a count of rows in table1 yields
cursor.execute("SELECT count(id) from table1")
<pyodbc.Cursor object at 0xb7b9b170>
>>> cursor.fetchall()
[(27, )]
As does a full dump of ids
>>> cursor.execute("SELECT id FROM table1")
<pyodbc.Cursor object at 0xb7b9b170>
>>> cursor.fetchall()
[(0.0, ), (3.0, ), (4.0, ), (5.0, ), (6.0, ), (7.0, ), (8.0, ), (11.0, ), (12.0, ), (18.0, ), (19.0, ), (20.0, ), (21.0, ), (22.0, ), (23.0, ), (24.0, ), (25.0, ), (26.0, ), (27.0, ), (28.0, ), (29.0, ), (32.0, ), (33.0, ), (34.0, ), (35.0, ), (36.0, ), (37.0, )]
But a dump of names (again, of type NVARCHAR) does not
>>> cursor.execute("SELECT name FROM table1")
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
pyodbc.ProgrammingError: ('42000', '[42000] [FreeTDS][SQL Server]Unicode data in a Unicode-only collation or ntext data cannot be sent to clients using DB-Library (such as ISQL) or ODBC version 3.7 or earlier. (4004) (SQLExecDirectW)')
... the critical error being
pyodbc.ProgrammingError: ('42000', '[42000] [FreeTDS][SQL Server]Unicode data in a Unicode-only collation or ntext data cannot be sent to clients using DB-Library (such as ISQL) or ODBC version 3.7 or earlier. (4004) (SQLExecDirectW)')
This is consistent across tables.
I've tried a variety of different versions of each, but now I'm running unixODBC 2.2.11 (from lenny repos), FreeTDS 0.91 (built from source, with ./configure --enable-msdblib --with-tdsver=8.0), and pyodbc 3.0.3 (built from source).
With a similar combination (unixODBC 2.3.0, FreeTDS 0.91, pyodbc 3.0.3), the same code works on Mac OS X 10.7.2.
I've searched high and low, investigating the solutions presented here and here and recompiling different versions of unixODBC and FreeTDS, but still no dice. Relevant configuration files provided below:
user#host:~$ cat /usr/local/etc/freetds.conf
#$Id: freetds.conf,v 1.12 2007/12/25 06:02:36 jklowden Exp $
#
# This file is installed by FreeTDS if no file by the same
# name is found in the installation directory.
#
# For information about the layout of this file and its settings,
# see the freetds.conf manpage "man freetds.conf".
# Global settings are overridden by those in a database
# server specific section
[global]
# TDS protocol version
tds version = 8.0
client charset = UTF-8
# Whether to write a TDSDUMP file for diagnostic purposes
# (setting this to /tmp is insecure on a multi-user system)
; dump file = /tmp/freetds.log
; debug flags = 0xffff
# Command and connection timeouts
; timeout = 10
; connect timeout = 10
# If you get out-of-memory errors, it may mean that your client
# is trying to allocate a huge buffer for a TEXT field.
# Try setting 'text size' to a more reasonable limit
text size = 64512
# A typical Sybase server
[egServer50]
host = symachine.domain.com
port = 5000
tds version = 5.0
# A typical Microsoft server
[egServer70]
host = ntmachine.domain.com
port = 1433
tds version = 8.0
[foo]
host = foo.bar.com
port = 1433
tds version = 8.0
user#host:~$ cat /etc/odbc.ini
[foo]
Description = Foo
Driver = foobar
Trace = No
Database = db
Server = foo.bar.com
Port = 1433
TDS_Version = 8.0
user#host:~$ cat /etc/odbcinst.ini
[foobar]
Description = Description
Driver = /usr/lib/odbc/libtdsodbc.so
Setup = /usr/lib/odbc/libtdsS.so
CPTimeout =
CPReuse =
Any advice or direction would be very much appreciated!

Answer 1

I encountered the same error with Ubuntu. I "solved" it with a work around.
All you need to do is to set the environment variable TDSVER.
import os
os.environ['TDSVER'] = '8.0'
As I said it is not a real "solution" but it works.

Answer 2

Try to add
TDS_Version=8.0;ClientCharset=UTF-8
in your connection string.
For example,
DRIVER=FreeTDS;SERVER=myserver;DATABASE=mydatebase;UID=me;PWD=pwd;TDS_Version=8.0;ClientCharset=UTF-8

Answer 3

Cant you just side step the issue and either Convert or Cast name to something it can handle?
cursor.execute("SELECT CAST(name AS TEXT) FROM table")