note 39126 added to function.mssql-connect

If you aren't "married" to a linux distribution yet, and want a quick turn-key solution for connecting to a mssql server from apache/php running on linux...here's what worked for me. Gentoo Linux has the freetds package (and sqsh, which is a cool tool) available as an emerge-able package (currently v0.61). Install the latest Gentoo distro (at this time is 1.4). Emerge freetds (and sqsh if you want it). No special make flags were needed. Download the latest tarballs of apache and php...follow the instructions for building statically. Make sure you include the "--with-mssql" statement in php ./configure options. With Gentoo, I didn't have to point the --with-mssql at a particular directory (I simply put "--with-mssql" and that's it) since freetds was installed via portage and was located automagically. Freetds looks for a freetds.conf file in several places..one of them being /etc, which was where portage installed it. My freetds.conf (minus comments and such) looks as follows: [global] tds version = 4.2 initial block size = 512 swap broken dates = no swap broken money = no try server login = yes try domain login = no cross domain login = no text size = 64512 [MyServer70] host = 192.168.0.25 port = 1433 tds version = 7.0 This may not be the most optimized config, but it worked. After everything is compiled and installed (with 4.3.4 I *did not* have to put in a line such as extension=mssql.so as earlier posts have mentioned in my php.ini file), start apache and try out your install with the following code snippet: <? $msconnect=mssql_connect("MyServer70","sa",""); $msdb=mssql_select_db("Northwind",$msconnect); $msquery = "select titleofcourtesy,firstname,lastname from employees"; $msresults= mssql_query($msquery); while ($row = mssql_fetch_array($msresults)) { echo "<li>" . $row['titleofcourtesy'] . " " . $row['firstname'] . " " . $row['lastname'] . "</li>\n"; } ?> Note, as previously mentioned, the "server" portion of the mssql_connect() must match the string used in the freetds.conf file. My test mssql server was configured for "mixed mode authentication", "sa" for admin name, and blank password. Adjust your connection string for your environment. It may be just as easy to get this running with RedHat or other distro...your mileage may vary. This, as I said, was what worked for me and it was very straightforward and worked without any special tricks. Sorry if this has some redundant info in it, but I hope this helps someone :) Cheers! ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mssql-connect.php Edit -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+39126 Delete -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+39126&report=yes Reject -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+39126&report=yes Search -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php