How to access SQL Server from Cocoa (Mac OS X)? - sql-server

Question

As the question says:
How to access Microsoft SQL Server 2005 from Cocoa on Mac OS X 10.5?
The database driver should be free if possible, paid solutions can be OK as well.

Answer 1

If you use ODBC, Actual Technologies makes a Microsoft SQL Server driver for OS X:
http://www.actualtechnologies.com/product_sqlserver.php

Answer 2

Some Googling suggests this question:
http://lists.apple.com/archives/Cocoa-dev/2004/Jul/msg00077.html
Which points to these two apps:
http://www.freetds.org/
http://www.macosguru.de/
Do those meet your needs? If not, can you elaborate on the question? Thanks!

Answer 3

FreeTDS is pretty good and fairly easy to use from Objective-C as it has a C API.
However an even easier way is to use the jTDS JDBC driver via the Java bridge. I know that Apple no longer recommends using the Java bridge but it is probably the easiest way to talk to SQL Server and if you structure you code nicely pretty much any other database on the planet.

Answer 4

Commenting on this because this is one of the top results on a google search for adding SQL Server connectivity to a Cocoa (MacOS) app but I don't see any current solutions listed.
FreeTDS - as Daniel suggested, is the fastest/easiest way to go but some information about how to make that happen without using the dreaded Java bridge or some kind of Python hack. Build FreeTDS with Homebrew (don't for heaven's sakes try to build it on the mac yourself), then select your project in the Xcode finder, select the "build phases" tab, then under "link binaries with libraries" link the FreeTDS library libsybdb (use either the dynamic or static one). click on the "+" sign, then choose "add other" then navigate to where the libraries are - for me the directory the libs were installed in was
/usr/local/Cellar/freetds/1.00.109/lib
then select (e.g.) libsybdb.a in that directory
You can then use the FreeTDS API or use a wrapper like this one by Martin Rybak, which is what I did (I'm using an old version of this "SQLClient" code). It works fairly straightforwardly for a SQL Server instance on AWS, and predictably slightly more complicatedly for an Azure AWS instance - I needed to hack the wrapper since the wrapper code issues a "use db" command to azure after login which Azure won't accept - for azure the database has to be set during the connection - instead I added (using the newer code from GitHub):
DBSETLDBNAME(_login, [host UTF8String]);
in the SQLClient.m file, which I added to the section:
DBSETLUSER(_login, [username UTF8String]);
DBSETLPWD(_login, _password);
DBSETLHOST(_login, [host UTF8String]);
DBSETLCHARSET(_login, [self.charset UTF8String]);
and I commented out:
if (database) {
_returnCode = dbuse(_connection, [database UTF8String]);
if (_returnCode == FAIL) {
[self connectionFailure:completion];
return;
}
}
My app is swift-based so I use a bridging header, adding to it:
#import SQLClient.h
To use the lib, something like (pseudocode since I'm not in front of my code right now):
let client = SQLClient.sharedInstance()
//I'm using the older code which uses a delegate and not notifications callback
self.client!.delegate = self
self.client!.connect("database_network_address", username: "username", password: "password", database: "database_name", completion: { (success) -> Void in
if(success) {
print ("connection has succeeded")
// now do something with the connection
self.client!.execute("select * from table_name", completion: { (data) -> Void in
//... do something with the returned array "data" per the wrapper API
})
} else {
print ("connection has NOT been success")
}
})
Let me know if you have any questions on this. This absolutely works for a Cocoa app, I use my app to upload tons of data into an Azure SQL Server instance. Good luck!