Issue with returning Cyrillic symbols from MSSQL via unixODBC and FreeTDS

Question

I'm using django-pyodbc as database backend on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and MSSQL 2008 on remote host. It works good except of returning Cyrillic symbols. Instead of them I see question marks - '?'. I have begin investigation what could cause this problem.

As far as I understand MSSQL-django chain looks so:

MSSQL <-> FreeTDS <-> unixODBC <-> pyodbc <-> django-pyodbc

So I have started from FreeTDS. When I run query in tsql - it works good I can see all symbols including Cyrillic.

The next one was isql - as far as I understand there I can test FreeTDS <-> unixODBC pair. And there I didn't get proper data. In fact when I run query in isql columns that contain Cyrillic symbols are empty or consist of not visible symbols. I guess that problem in communication between FreeTDS <-> unixODBC. What could cause this problem? Btw, I have also tried iusql - nothing have changed.

MSSQL collation is Cyrillic_General_CI_AS.

Content of freetds.conf:

[global]
tds version = 4.2
dump file = /tmp/freetds.log
debug flags = 0xffff
timeout = 10
connect timeout = 10
client charset = UTF-8
text size = 64512

[egServer50]
host = symachine.domain.com
port = 5000
tds version = 5.0

[egServer70]
host = ntmachine.domain.com
port = 1433
tds version = 7.0

[rfxdigest]
host = mssql-iis-1
port = 1433
tds version = 8.0
client charset = UTF-8

Content of odbc.ini:

[RFX]
Description = Rfx digest server
Driver = FreeTDS
Database = RFXDB
Servername = rfxdigest
TDS_Version = 8.0 

Edit1 15.08.12

In python using pyodbc I get '?' instead of Cyrillic symbols - I have tried both python versions: UCS2 and UCS4.

Answer 1

Ok, I have made all this modules chain work:

MSSQL <-> FreeTDS <-> unixODBC <-> pyodbc <-> django-pyodbc

I just have added 'unicode_results':True in DATABASES options in django settings:

DATABASES = {
'default': {
    'ENGINE': 'sql_server.pyodbc', # Add 'postgresql_psycopg2', 'postgresql', 'mysql', 'sqlite3' or 'oracle'.
    'NAME': 'name',                      # Or path to database file if using sqlite3.
    'USER': 'user',                      # Not used with sqlite3.
    'PASSWORD': 'pwd',                  # Not used with sqlite3.
    'HOST': 'server-name',                      # Set to empty string for localhost. Not used with sqlite3.
    'PORT': 'port',                      # Set to empty string for default. Not used with sqlite3.
    'OPTIONS': {
            'unicode_results':True,
            'driver': 'FreeTDS',
            'host_is_server': True,
            'extra_params': 'TDS_VERSION=8.0'
    }

But pyodbc and isql still doesn't work correctly - maybe I have missed other unicode-specific parameters. Going to check how odbc and pyodbc use this unicode_results parameter later. Anyway site now able to show Cyrillic symbols.