Introduction
I was having a difficult time getting four Windows 2003 Servers to connect to an MSSQL database with PHP 5.2.5 and IIS after already getting one such server to connect with no problems. I even copied the entire php directory and dlls to the other servers exactly as they were on the working server but continually got "Unable to connect to server" errors. The fix was to delete the ntwdblib.dll from the PHP directory. It was already in the C:\windows\system32 directory and this did not cause a problem on the first server but did on all the others.
Installing/Configuring
Table of Contents
Requirements
Requirements for Win32 platforms.
The extension requires the MS SQL Client Tools to be installed on the system where PHP is installed. The Client Tools can be installed from the MS SQL Server CD or by copying ntwdblib.dll from \winnt\system32 on the server to \winnt\system32 on the PHP box. Copying ntwdblib.dll will only provide access through named pipes. Configuration of the client will require installation of all the tools.
Requirements for Unix/Linux platforms.
To use the MSSQL extension on Unix/Linux, you first need to build and install the FreeTDS library. Source code and installation instructions are available at the FreeTDS home page: » http://www.freetds.org/
Note: In Windows, the DBLIB from Microsoft is used. Functions that return a column name are based on the dbcolname() function in DBLIB. DBLIB was developed for SQL Server 6.x where the max identifier length is 30. For this reason, the maximum column length is 30 characters. On platforms where FreeTDS is used (Linux), this is not a problem.
add a note
User Contributed NotesInstalling/Configuring
ksamuels at pleazNOSPAM dot sportsendeavors dot COM
18-Jun-2008 09:55
18-Jun-2008 09:55
jklowden at freetds dot org
27-May-2008 06:06
27-May-2008 06:06
The 30-character limitation does not apply to the FreeTDS db-lib implementation. FreeTDS returns column names of any length supported by the server (and protocol).