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10/06/2005: "FreeTDS an implementation of SQL Server and Sybase TDS protocol libraries"

I was searching for interesting SQL Server security stuff to look for an found out that the network protocol is called TDS (Tabular Data Stream) - well actually I knew that already. I wanted to know if there are any documents available that divulge the protocol and any free libraries. If they exist then its first possible to build your own client and second possible to send arbitrary commands to the SQL Server port, i.e. it could be hacked.

There is a great site called "FreeTDS - Making the leap to SQL Server". This details the API's available for Perl and php. There is also a link to a Java implementation and of course C libraries are available. Many different flavours of the protocol are supported. There is even versions for Unix so its possible to access data from SQL Server on Unix/Linux machines and even to port SQL Server code to Unix.

There is a FAQ, a user guide and a reference manual. I have not delved deeply into this yet but it certainly looks like a promising way to create a tool that can find and interrogate SQL Server, great for writing security tools and great for security research.