LIX. Microsoft SQL Server Functions
Introduction
These functions allow you to access MS SQL Server database.
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. 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.
Installation
The MSSQL extension is enabled by adding extension=php_mssql.dll to php.ini.
To get these functions to work, you have to compile PHP with --with-mssql[=DIR], where DIR is the FreeTDS install prefix. And FreeTDS should be compiled using --enable-msdblib.
Runtime Configuration
The behaviour of these functions is affected by settings in php.ini.
Table 1. MS SQL Server configuration options
Name Default Changeable
mssql.allow_persistent "1" PHP_INI_SYSTEM
mssql.max_persistent "-1" PHP_INI_SYSTEM
mssql.max_links "-1" PHP_INI_SYSTEM
mssql.min_error_severity "10" PHP_INI_ALL
mssql.min_message_severity "10" PHP_INI_ALL
mssql.compatability_mode "0" PHP_INI_ALL
mssql.connect_timeout "5" PHP_INI_ALL
mssql.timeout "60" PHP_INI_ALL
mssql.textsize "-1" PHP_INI_ALL
mssql.textlimit "-1" PHP_INI_ALL
mssql.batchsize "0" PHP_INI_ALL
mssql.datetimeconvert "1" PHP_INI_ALL
mssql.secure_connection "0" PHP_INI_SYSTEM
mssql.max_procs "25" PHP_INI_ALL
For further details and definition of the PHP_INI_* constants see ini_set().
Resource Types
Predefined Constants
The constants below are defined by this extension, and will only be available when the extension has either been compiled into PHP or dynamically loaded at runtime.
MSSQL_ASSOC (integer)
MSSQL_NUM (integer)
MSSQL_BOTH (integer)
SQLTEXT (integer)
SQLVARCHAR (integer)
SQLCHAR (integer)
SQLINT1 (integer)
SQLINT2 (integer)
SQLINT4 (integer)
SQLBIT (integer)
SQLFLT8 (integer)
Table of Contents
mssql_bind -- Adds a parameter to a stored procedure or a remote stored procedure
mssql_close -- Close MS SQL Server connection
mssql_connect -- Open MS SQL server connection
mssql_data_seek -- Moves internal row pointer
mssql_execute -- Executes a stored procedure on a MS SQL server database
mssql_fetch_array -- Fetch a result row as an associative array, a numeric array, or both
mssql_fetch_assoc -- Returns an associative array of the current row in the result set specified by result_id
mssql_fetch_batch -- Returns the next batch of records
mssql_fetch_field -- Get field information
mssql_fetch_object -- Fetch row as object
mssql_fetch_row -- Get row as enumerated array
mssql_field_length -- Get the length of a field
mssql_field_name -- Get the name of a field
mssql_field_seek -- Seeks to the specified field offset
mssql_field_type -- Gets the type of a field
mssql_free_result -- Free result memory
mssql_free_statement -- Free statement memory
mssql_get_last_message -- Returns the last message from the server
mssql_guid_string -- Converts a 16 byte binary GUID to a string
mssql_init -- Initializes a stored procedure or a remote stored procedure
mssql_min_error_severity -- Sets the lower error severity
mssql_min_message_severity -- Sets the lower message severity
mssql_next_result -- Move the internal result pointer to the next result
mssql_num_fields -- Gets the number of fields in result
mssql_num_rows -- Gets the number of rows in result
mssql_pconnect -- Open persistent MS SQL connection
mssql_query -- Send MS SQL query
mssql_result -- Get result data
mssql_rows_affected -- Returns the number of records affected by the query
mssql_select_db -- Select MS SQL database
add a note User Contributed Notes
Microsoft SQL Server Functions
Asad Moin
29-May-2004 08:48
I took the following steps to make PHP talk to SQL2000:
- Copy ntwdblib.dll file from your SQL server's \winnt\system32 folder to the \winnt\system32 folder on the PHP box.
- Copy the php_mssql.dll from the 'dlls/' directory in distribution package to your windows/system (Win9.x) or winnt/system32 (WinNT, Win2000, XP) directory.
- Add or uncomment the following line under Windows Extentions in your php.ini file (\winnt\php.ini): extension=php_mssql.dll
Hope that helps.
andrew at power-grid dot com
27-May-2004 01:11
Ok, this took me a few days to get right but for those of you out there having a hard time with getting PHP to talk to SQL 2000 this is for you! Personally for me the mssql plugin barely worked with sql 2000 and was VERY slow, here's your solution and also some good code to connect securely and quickly through ADO. I was having the worst time getting ADO to work as well, most sites do the driver part a different way.. for me the code below is the only thing that worked.
$db = new COM("ADODB.Connection");
$dsn = "DRIVER={SQL Server}; SERVER={SERVER};UID={USER};PWD={PASS}; DATABASE={DB}";
$db->Open($dsn);
$rs = $db->Execute("SELECT * FROM table");
while (!$rs->EOF)
{
echo $rs->Fields['column']->Value."
";
$rs->MoveNext();
}
?>
Arthur W Rudd
27-May-2004 12:37
I'm running apache 1.3.26 and php 4.3.6 on a linux server (debian), and connecting to SQL Server 2000 via php4-mssql and Freetds.
I managed to get a connection to the SQL server, but found that when I used the function mssql_query() to pass in a Select statement containing datetime columns, I would get the following message in Internet Explorer - "The page cannot be displayed". When I removed the datetime column from the query, it worked fine, and returned a resultset.
Looked in the apache error.log file, and found the error "child pid xxxxxx exit signal segmentation fault".
After a lot of searching on the internet I stumbled upon an entry which was missing from my php.ini. I added the line "mssql.datetimeconvert = Off" to the MSSQL section of pphp.ini, restarted Apache, and the problem went away. Now I can select dates in SQL queries
jasenko at get2net dot dk
06-May-2004 12:46
If you get a crash trying to get currency from database with smallmoney datatype and big value (in my case it was 15000..), change datatype to money instead. The error is gone.
I'm using php 4.2.3 and MSSQL 7.0 on windows.
andrej at dairyweb dot com dot au
28-Apr-2004 02:49
if you are having problems with freeTDS, or like me you are trying to get access to unicode data from mssql.
try http://odbtp.sourceforge.net it is cross platform and (reportedly) faster than freeTDS. it is very stable and easy to configure.
i was originally trying to solve an error message of "Unicode data in Unicode-only collation or ntext data cannot be sent to clients using DB-Library (such as ISQL) or ODBC version 3.7 or earlier" and found this solution.
hope it helps someone.
elmer at web-axis dot net
28-Apr-2004 10:52
Here's something that could save you 2-3 days research trying to figure out:
putenv('TDSDUMP=/tmp/tds.log');
putenv('SYBASE=/usr/lib/freetds');
putenv('TDSVER=70');
?>
If you have problems getting the mssql functions to work try these varibles. MSSQL/PHP has problems dealing with different tds versions. 7.0 seems to work well with our server version, maybe a different version would work better with yours.
pmfa at versenet dot com
27-Apr-2004 10:26
If you're going to use freeTDS just to access mssql databases, supply the "--enable-msdblib" switch to the freeTDS configure script when building the library. This will fix some obscure problems, like the month in a date not being displayed correctly, more information in http://www.freetds.org/userguide/config.htm.
gentiboard2002 at yahoo dot de
19-Apr-2004 07:55
there's no documentation of the php.ini option mssql.secure_connection.
so i have here a MS SQL 2000 Server with Windows Authentication and a Windows 2003 Server with IIS 6. So it is clear that i cannot use the usual handling of a mssql_connect.
I turned the mssql.secure_connection on.
I let the Windows IIS to run under an Service Account(normal user account without any special rights) in a Windows Domain, so i do have a authenticated connection to the SQL Server...
Everything works fine without any rewrite of the code...
19-Mar-2004 02:42
Note: DBLib is obsolete and only supports SQL Server 4.x, 6.5, 7.0 and 8.x.
jholland at cs dot selu dot edu
11-Dec-2003 03:37
To enable mssql in php 4.3.3 and above on linux/unix boxes, you must put this line in php.ini
extension=mssql.so
