ODBC Driver 17.4 for SQL Server Released

mgkuhn To add to that, we built the unixodbc package with the default, minimal options to be as compatible as possible across distributions and avoid unnecessary dependencies. You have some options. You can install unixodbc 2.3.4 first and then install the driver and they will work together. I would also suggest installing mssql-tools and using sqlcmd. Sqlcmd has more functionality than isql and the cursor keys work there.

mgkuhn Microsoft provides unixodbc because version 2.3.7 includes many bug fixes that we have contributed fixes for which affect a lot customers (see the long list of bug fixes at unixodbc.org). The alternative is to tell customers to compile unixodbc manually or wait until Ubuntu/Red Hat/Suse/Debian provide an update (note: 2.3.4 is from 2015!). I'll forward your request regarding libreadline7 on to the ODBC driver team to see if we can incorporate it into future releases.

After adding to my Ubuntu 18.04 system Microsoft's repository

deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/ubuntu/18.04/prod bionic main

in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mssql-release.list, I now get two versions of the unixodbc package offered:

$ apt-cache showpkg unixodbc
Package: unixodbc
Versions: 
2.3.7 (/var/lib/apt/lists/packages.microsoft.com_ubuntu_18.04_prod_dists_bionic_main_binary-amd64_Packages) (/var/lib/dpkg/status)
[...]
2.3.4-1.1ubuntu3 (/var/lib/apt/lists/www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk_pub_linux_ubuntu_dists_bionic_universe_binary-amd64_Packages)
[...]
Dependencies: 
2.3.7 - libc6 (2 2.14) odbcinst1debian2 (2 2.3.7) libodbc1 (2 2.3.7) unixodbc-bin (3 2.3.7) unixodbc-bin:i386 (3 2.3.7) unixodbc:i386 (32 (null)) 
2.3.4-1.1ubuntu3 - libc6 (2 2.14) libodbc1 (2 2.3.1) libreadline7 (2 6.0) odbcinst1debian2 (2 2.3.1) unixodbc-bin (3 2.2.4-1) unixodbc-bin:i386 (3 2.2.4-1) unixodbc:i386 (32 (null)) 
[...]

So it seems both Microsoft and Ubuntu provide versions of the unixodbc package, which contains the isql tool. And the system install Microsoft's unixodbc by default (because of the higher version number?).

But the two are not equivalent:

As you can see from the above dependencies, Ubuntu's unixodbc-2.3.4-1ubuntu3 has been linked against the libreadline7 library, such that the isql tool uses the readline command-line editor and therefore can deal with cursor movements, which is extremely convenien.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's unixodbc-2.3.4 was not linked with libreadline7, and therefore sadly does not support any cursor keys in its built-in command prompt (e.g., for inline editing or to access previous command history).

Why does Microsoft have to provide an alternate version of unixodbc (isql) under the same package name?

If you must provide your own version of unixodbc (isql) for some reason, could you please also compile it with readline support included, like the Ubuntu version?

rpodric He's on Linux, so he's using the Linux packages.

hyperqbe It doesn't really sounds like a driver issue. Are you sure connectivity to the server is fine? Can you test from another server? Try reverting to the previous version of the driver and tools to see if you still get the error?

hyperqbe Could that be the same thing that I found?  Run the installer again and choose "repair" and re-test.

v17.0.1.1 (installed Feb 11, 2018), which probably explains it then. That may not have been the very first v17, but it was close.