People have asked for many things after the release of func_odbc. Func_odbc is a module that permits you to create fill-in-the-blank SQL templates, which become dialplan functions. One of the requests was for automatically using the column names to populate variables, which became the HASH() function. Another request was for multi-row access, and that is now integrated within func_odbc as the parameter "mode=multirow".

One of the new features that will be available in Asterisk 1.4 will be a template-driven SQL function, whose name is func_odbc. This new tool will allow an administrator to create an SQL template, to be filled in with variables from the dialplan. Given popular demand, this module has been backported to 1.2, so it may be used with that earlier version. The svn repository where this backport is kept is at SVN Community. This backport will be kept up to date at least until 1.4 is released.