The problem here is that FreeTDS doesn't properly support querying the server capabilities.

Placeholder handling is done by the server, not by DBD::Sybase or by the client libraries (this uses the ct_dynamic() and friends API). DBD::Sybase queries the server with a ct_capability() call to see if placeholders are supported. This will return false if the connection is at TDS 4.x, but I believe that FreeTDS stubbs out the ct_capability call, just returning succeed.

So syb_dynamic_supported doesn't get set correctly with FreeTDS, unfortunately.

BTW - placeholders work to a certain extent when using FreeTDS with a Sybase server (i.e. TDS version 5.x), but TDS 7.x (used by MS-SQL) hasn't been correctly implemented yet.

Michael