Re: PHP <-> SQL Server?

I'd say SQL server might be overkill too, depending on the machine. If they'd got 'expertise' in it - great. One of my clients said the same thing, but when problems occurred, they couldn't do anything except look at the transaction log files and stop/start the server. We've had network problems internally on that network, which, imo, are causing communication problems. freetds itself has not, in our own network, caused any problems under testing conditions. I will admit that our load on this hasn't been tested beyond ~30-40 people using the site at the same time, but we showed no freetds problems. Obviously support is an issue, and I'm fortunate that the man behind the freetds project actually lives in our town (I'll be seeing him tonight most likely at the Linux user group tonight). I've been able to get a lot of helpful info and tips, etc from him on configuration and whatnot quite quickly - quicker than email. I'd also go so far as to say that he's personally been quite helpful above and beyond what you'd except from an open source project. PHP notwithstanding - there's probably >1000 people on this PHP list, and I don't think the TDS project has even close to that many... I've had mixed experiences with SQL7. I hate to dismiss it out of hand because it's Microsoft, and we've been using it >1 year on a project (and testing in house). It's pretty good, but we've had weird issues now and then (without freetds - using NT/ASP clients only). Timeouts, etc., which have necessitated reboots. And this isn't cheap hardware. These are top of the line (from 1 year ago anyway) Compaq proliants (?) with 1 gig, some bigass RAID setup, etc. Not a BestBuy special, and yet, we've still *required* at least 2 reboots that I'm aware of because of stability issues in the past year. I think we've had another 2 due to SP upgrades, memory upgrades. John Rumpelein wrote: > Michael, > > > I'm assuming you mean from a non windows box - SQL from PHP > > on Windows > > is pretty straightforward thing (if only via ODBC). > > This is correct. The config would be Apache/PHP running on Linux, and > SQL Server running on Windows 2000. > > > We chose the freetds route - freetds.org has an open source tds > > driver. TDS is the protocol used to talk to Sybase and > > MSSQL server. > > We've had *almost* no problems with this at all. Only real > > It's this "almost" that makes me nervous. :-) But there are no > problems with it currently? Does it behave under load, or have you > yet to determine that? > > This is going to be a pretty critical site, it is an event > registration thing. Unexpected surprises would be bad. > I hate to sound like a raving FUD nut, but running anything on MS where 'unexpected surprises are bad' isn't a good thing. UNLESS... there will be someone on site to handle with the issues immediately (reboot, etc.) and available 24/7 via pager. I had my share of problems with Linux, but more often than not we can trace the problem back to a reason, fix that, and not have the same problem again. We've had too many unexplained performance issues on NT for my taste. W2k might be a different kettle of fish, but do you want to put something mission critical on a product that's only been live for a few months? Sounds like they've made their mind up to use SQL server no matter what, but if you can, persuade them to use Frontbase or Postgres on Linux. I want you to use Frontbase so I can get some realworld feedback on it! :) Seriously though, the biggest problem you face is that if there's a problem, they'll blame the driver. If MS released drivers for Linux/Unix, you'd be OK. But as it's not 'official', no matter what you do your recommendation will be suspect. As you can get *native* driver support for many other DBs, one of those would be, imo, a stronger alternative would be to use another DB. Anyway, after all that rambling, I'd say put together a test system with PHP/Linux --> SQL7. If you have problems/questions, give me a call. I'll see what I can do to help. > > I am personally biased towards MySQL because I have used it with PHP > extensively without any problems, but the client would prefer SQL > Server because they have in-house expertise with this. Oracle is > another obvious choice but it's expensive and is probably overkill for > this project. > > I still welcome people's thoughts, and thank you very much to the > people who have written. Again I'm not subscribed to the list, so if > you can respond privately to jmr@jmrtech.com that would be terrific. > -- ========================== Michael Kimsal http://www.tapinternet.com PHP Training courses http://www.tapinternet.com/php