FreeTDS connection issues

Mental note to self (and everyone reading here): If using FreeTDS on OS X and you cannot connect to your MS SQL Server using iodbctest , but you can con using tsql, and your TDSDUMP logfile contains

tds_iconv_info_init: client charset name "" unrecognized

make sure you have put

client charset = UTF-8

into your freetds.conf – not

client charset = utf-8

Note the case difference.

I can’t believe the amount of hours I have wasted setting up FreeTDS and ODBC connectivity on various systems by now – and still I get bit by crap like the above.