I'm assuming you possibly mean the max size of a field and not the size of the data in the field (like finding out a column can contain a CHAR(255)). I'm not sure about FreeTDS or SQL Server 7 but under DBD::Sybase (they're closely relatated), you can find out this information by checking the PRECISION attribute of the statement handle - not quite as convenient as asp but ...

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use DBI;
use Data::Dumper;

my $dbh = DBI->connect( 'dbi:Sybase:server=name',  'user', 'pass' );
$dbh->do( "use database" );
my $sql = "select * from alertquerystring order by alert_id";
my $sth = $dbh->prepare( $sql );
$sth->execute;

print "The fields returned are of type: ", Dumper( $sth->{TYPE} );
print "The fields have the following precision ", Dumper( $sth->{PRECI
+SION} );

$sth->finish;
$dbh->disconnect;
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-derby