GUIDs returned as gibberish (ODBC/MS SQL)

[LaidBackWebSage]

All, I am using Perl 5.8.8 on Ubuntu Server 8.04, with DBD::ODBC, and FreeTDS. The database is on a WinNT server, running MS SQL Server 2000. Here is my pseudo-query:

SELECT row_guid FROM table

What should come back is this:
DAD26152-1C43-11DD-BD0B-0800200C9A66

What does come back is this:
RaÒÚCݽ

Is perl somehow reading this as hex or something?

Do I need to (un)pack somehow?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Kevin J

[graff]

Here is my pseudo-query:

SELECT row_guid FROM table

What should come back is this:

DAD26152-1C43-11DD-BD0B-0800200C9A66

Have you sent the actual SQL query (as implemented in your script) using some other DB client, and made sure that it returns the string that you say you should be getting?

Have you looked at the table definition to determine what sort of data field you are querying for? (Does the DB server happen to provide some "special" data type, is the field encrypted, might there be some DB-side function call that should be used in the query string to fetch the value correctly, etc?)

I don't think we can say anything useful based on the information originally posted (unless someone else has actually seen something very similar...)

[CountZero]

It looks like an encoding issue.

Something in the chain (database data, database server, client, DBD::ODBC, your program) thinks the data is in some multi-byte format 'Unidcode, UTF-16, ...) and rendering it as such.

What happens if you read another field?

[pKai]

A GUID is at core a 128 bit number.

The Wikipedia link above has all the information you need to convert between the binary and the text representation.

A cpan search gives Data:GUID. But on first glance there is no method for a direct binary -> text conversion.

[massa]

print Data::GUID->best_guess($your_guid)->as_string

should work...

[LaidBackWebSage]

The "Data::GUID" module is what I needed.

Many thanks!

Kevin J

[Krambambuli]

Are you sure the data put into the DB is OK...?

The first 8 characters in your expected result string are

DA D2 61 52

which - read in reverse order - looks pretty much as some hex encoded values (0x52 = 'R', 0x61 = 'a', ... ) that would fit what you see, but then your expected '-' doesn't fit into the picture, so I'm unsure about what's what where.

[mje]

If you don't get anywhere resolving this and can put together a small example of your schema, an example row and an example of your perl I'll take a look at it.