Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase Functions (PDO_DBLIB)
PDO_DBLIB is a driver that implements the PHP Data Objects (PDO) interface to enable access from PHP to Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase databases through the FreeTDS library.
This extension is not available anymore on Windows.
On Windows, you should use SqlSrv, an alternative driver for MS SQL is available from Microsoft: » http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/ff657782.aspx .
If it is not possible to use SqlSrv, you can use the PDO_ODBC driver to connect to Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase databases, as the native Windows DB-LIB is ancient, thread un-safe and no longer supported by Microsoft.
Table of Contents
User Contributed Notes 18 notes
Hi All, I’wrote a class to connect to MSSQL/Azure databases with Transaction support.
Hope this can help anyone!
private $db ;
private $cTransID ;
private $childTrans = array();
public function __construct ( $hostname , $port , $dbname , $username , $pwd )
$this -> hostname = $hostname ;
$this -> port = $port ;
$this -> dbname = $dbname ;
$this -> username = $username ;
$this -> pwd = $pwd ;
public function beginTransaction ()
$cAlphanum = «AaBbCc0Dd1EeF2fG3gH4hI5iJ6jK7kLlM8mN9nOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz» ;
$this -> cTransID = «T» . substr ( str_shuffle ( $cAlphanum ), 0 , 7 );
array_unshift ( $this -> childTrans , $this -> cTransID );
$stmt = $this -> db -> prepare ( «BEGIN TRAN [ $this -> cTransID ];» );
return $stmt -> execute ();
while( count ( $this -> childTrans ) > 0 ) $cTmp = array_shift ( $this -> childTrans );
$stmt = $this -> db -> prepare ( «ROLLBACK TRAN [ $cTmp ];» );
$stmt -> execute ();
>
while( count ( $this -> childTrans ) > 0 ) $cTmp = array_shift ( $this -> childTrans );
$stmt = $this -> db -> prepare ( «COMMIT TRAN [ $cTmp ];» );
$stmt -> execute ();
>
public function close () $this -> db = null ;
>
try $this -> db = new PDO ( «dblib:host= $this -> hostname : $this -> port ;dbname= $this -> dbname » , » $this -> username » , » $this -> pwd » );
> catch ( PDOException $e ) $this -> logsys .= «Failed to get DB handle: » . $e -> getMessage () . «\n» ;
>
There is currently little sybase related PDO docs out there. The ones that I found often mention a spec for a dsn that is invalid. Here’s how I am currently connecting to sybase ASE:
1. Compile up freetds http://www.freetds.org on top of open client;
2. Add the PDO and PD_DBLIB modules to php 5 as per the documentation; Note: I’m currently using the PDO-beta and PDO_DBLIB-beta;
3. Check mods installed ok using «pear list» and «php -m»;
The documentation often says to use «sybase:» as your DSN, this doesn’t work. Use «dblib:» instead. Here’s an example:
try $hostname = «myhost» ;
$port = 10060 ;
$dbname = «tempdb» ;
$username = «dbuser» ;
$pw = «password» ;
$dbh = new PDO ( «dblib:host= $hostname : $port ;dbname= $dbname » , » $username » , » $pw » );
> catch ( PDOException $e ) echo «Failed to get DB handle: » . $e -> getMessage () . «\n» ;
exit;
>
$stmt = $dbh -> prepare ( «select name from master..sysdatabases where name = db_name()» );
$stmt -> execute ();
while ( $row = $stmt -> fetch ()) print_r ( $row );
>
unset( $dbh ); unset( $stmt );
?>
Hope this helps.
If You work with MSSQL Server 7.0/2000/. under Windows and use non latin Encoding then better To use PDO_MSSQL until PDO_ODBC bugs will be fixed (MSSQL ext far more stable and usabe for PHP versions <=5.1.2).
If your MSSQL connection use strings in OEM encoding (cp866 for russian charset)
1. Run Microsoft Server/Client Network Utility on work PC and UNCHECK «DBLibrary options»/»Automatic ANSI to OEM conversion»
2. Restart Web server if needed.
FYI: PDO dblib module (pdo_dblib.so) was installed when I installed php-mssql in CentOS 7. I thought php-mssql would just include the soon to be deprecated mssql PHP functions but it also contains the PDO connector. After installing this I’m able to connect to our MSSQL 2014 DB via PDO!
Instead of using Mssql or DBLib extension you should use the official extensions from Microsoft from here: https://github.com/Microsoft/msphpsql
If you use PDO SQLSRV on windows 7, using 32 bit php on XAMMP, you might encounter driver problems : «This extension requires the Microsoft ODBC Driver 11 for SQL Server to communicate with SQL Server»
The reason, Microsoft 32-bit ODBC driver doesn’t install properly on 64-bit Windows 7.
Check the solution to PDO SQLSRV driver problem here in StackOverflow
For people with issues inserting UTF-8 / Unicode data using DBLIB, you can’t do this natively — but you can workaround the problem by converting the data first.
e.g. inserting into a nvarchar column with collation Latin1_General_CI_AS
.
$res = $db->prepare($sql);
$res->bindValue(‘:value’, iconv(‘UTF-8’, ‘ISO8859-1’, $value);
.
PDO dblib (pdo_dblib.so) was installed in ubuntu 16.04 with php 7.2
apt-get install php7.2-sybase
*You need FreeTDS driver
Keep in mind the limitation sql server imposes on clients using the connection methods that dblib uses:
no ntext column values can be transmitted, you will get an insightfull ‘4004’ error when trying.
The full text of the error is:
Unicode data in a Unicode-only collation or ntext data cannot be sent to clients using DB-Library (such as ISQL) or ODBC version 3.7 or earlier.
When using dblib to connect to azure sql in linux, the connecting user must have at least access rights to the master database (no read/write necessary), as you cannot change the default database on a user in azure like you can with sql server. It would appear that even though you specify a database in the DSN, freetds is making a connection to the default database (master), then changing to the specified database. jTDS (used by tools like DBeaver) build a connection string that specifies the connection database, and thus doesn’t need access to master. I also had to specify the server name in the user (e.g. — «username@servername» in PHP, though not in tsql (which also uses the freetds library).
Have lost over a day trying to work out why a connection to an sql server was failing, I thought I’d share the following:
This fails:
new PDO ( «dblib:dbname=[dbname]; host=[host];», [user], [password]);
This works:
new PDO ( «dblib:dbname = [dbname]; host=[host];», [user], [password]);
It’s always the little things that are the hardest to find. In this case the missing spaces were triggering the error «SQLSTATE[HY000] General SQL Server error: Check messages from the SQL Server (severity 16)». The spaces don’t cause problems when using the same syntax to connect to mysql, so I’m guessing it’s a Microsoft thing. I only I could bill them for the time I’ve wasted.
Hopefully this will help someone who is having problems connecting to MSSQL. I was having a heck of a time trying to get my dev server to connect to a remote MSSQL 2005 box.
When using PDO like so:
$mssql = new PDO ( ‘dblib:host=;dbname=’ , » , » );
?>
I was receiving the message:
Adaptive Server is unavailable or does not exist
And mssql_connect() simply told me «Could not connect to server»
I tried everything, different configuration options for FreeTDS/PHP, different versions, etc. But the answer was one line in php.ini:
This line, which defaults to Off, needs to be ON if you are using NT authentication:
FreeTDS-0.82 configured like:
./configure —with-tdsver=8.0 —enable-msdblib —with-gnu-ld
PHP 5.2.11 configured like:
./configure —with-mssql=/usr/local —with-pdo-dblib=/usr/local [other options]
Running on Apache/2.2.13 (Unix / Linux)
Feel free to email me if you need help as I’ve spent 20+ hours reading and fiddling with this issue, so I’m very familiar with it now.
Here’s how to call a stored procedure from MS SQL Server:
$return = null ;
$param1 = ‘value1’ ;
$param2 = ‘value2’ ;
$ds = $db -> prepare ( » );
$ds -> bindParam ( 1 , $return , PDO :: PARAM_INT | PDO :: PARAM_INPUT_OUTPUT , 4 );
$ds -> bindParam ( 2 , $param1 , PDO :: PARAM_INT | PDO :: PARAM_INPUT_OUTPUT , 4 );
$ds -> bindParam ( 3 , $param2 , PDO :: PARAM_INT | PDO :: PARAM_INPUT_OUTPUT , 4 );
For PDO MSSQL connection issues, ensure that you have the updated version of ntwdblib.dll (currently 8.00.194 as of this post). Overwrite the existing (old) file or place it in the Windows system32 folder. The version that ships with PHP 5.2.X does not work. This is a well known issue apparently, but I had a really hard time finding information on this issue until I was able to lock in a file name. I hope that this helps someone.
To enable the mssql PDO driver under windows you need to:
1) uncomment the «extension=php_pdo_mssql.dll» line from php.ini
2) copy ntwdblib.dll into the directory where you have installed php
To connect to SQL Server 2005 Express on Windows, do it like this:
$pdo = new PDO (‘mssql:host=localhost,1433;dbname=[redacted]’, ‘[redacted]’, ‘[redacted]’);
YMMV on other OS’s; try each.
Also make sure your TCP/IP Properties -> IP Addresses are correct under SQL Server Configuration Manager.
If you are struggling with
‘Unicode data in a Unicode-only collation or ntext data cannot be sent to clients using DB-Library (such as ISQL) or ODBC version 3.7 or earlier.’
when trying to do ‘SELECT *’ queries:
Obviously the best way to deal with this is change your unicode fields to the ascii equivalent (ntext > text), but if that is not an option here is an implementation based on the info at http://www.rochester.edu/IT/web/WebHelp/mssql/limitations.html which checks the data types of the fields and casts them as neccesary.
class mssql private static $statement = null ;
private static $typemap =array(
‘ntext’ => ‘text’ ,
‘bigint’ => ‘real’ ,
‘decimal’ => ‘real’ ,
‘float’ => ‘real’ ,
‘numeric’ => ‘real’
);
public static function all_fields ( $table ) if( self :: $statement == null ) $db = pdodb :: instance (); // or however you get your global instance
$query = «SELECT COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_NAME=?» ;
self :: $statement = $db -> prepare ( $query );
>
self :: $statement -> execute (array( $table ));
$fields =array();
$need_cast = false ;
while( $field = self :: $statement -> fetch ()) $field_quoted = self :: quote_field ( $field [ ‘COLUMN_NAME’ ]);
if(isset( self :: $typemap [ $field [ ‘DATA_TYPE’ ]])) $fields []= ‘CAST(‘ . $field_quoted . ‘ AS ‘ . self :: $typemap [ $field [ ‘DATA_TYPE’ ]]. ‘) AS ‘ . $field_quoted ;
$need_cast = true ;
> else $fields []= $field_quoted ;
>
return ( $need_cast ) ? implode ( ‘, ‘ , $fields ) : ‘*’ ;
>
public static function quote_field ( $field ) $pos = strpos ( $field , ‘ ‘ );
return ( $pos === false ) ? $field : ‘[‘ . $field . ‘]’ ;
>
>
$db = pdodb : instance (); // singleton PDO instance
$stmt = $db -> prepare ( ‘SELECT ‘ . mssql :: all_fields ( ‘My_Table’ ). ‘ FROM My_Table’ );
$stmt -> execute ();
.
?>
Essentially mssql::all_fields($table) returns ‘*’ if it can, otherwise the fields listed with the relevant casts in place e.g. ‘NoteIdent, Owner, CAST(Note AS text) AS Note’
PDO_SQLSRV DSN
Specifies whether the connection is assigned from a connection pool (1 or true ) or not (0 or false ).
Specifies whether the communication with SQL Server is encrypted (1 or true ) or unencrypted (0 or false ).
Specifies the server and instance of the database’s mirror (if enabled and configured) to use when the primary server is unavailable.
Specifies the number of seconds to wait before failing the connection attempt.
Disables or explicitly enables support for multiple active Result sets (MARS).
Specifies whether to use SQL-92 rules for quoted identifiers (1 or true ) or to use legacy Transact-SQL rules (0 or false ).
The name of the database server.
Specifies the path for the file used for trace data.
Specifies whether ODBC tracing is enabled (1 or true ) or disabled (0 or false ) for the connection being established.
Specifies the transaction isolation level. The accepted values for this option are PDO::SQLSRV_TXN_READ_UNCOMMITTED, PDO::SQLSRV_TXN_READ_COMMITTED, PDO::SQLSRV_TXN_REPEATABLE_READ, PDO::SQLSRV_TXN_SNAPSHOT, and PDO::SQLSRV_TXN_SERIALIZABLE.
Specifies whether the client should trust (1 or true ) or reject (0 or false ) a self-signed server certificate.
Specifies the name of the computer for tracing.
Examples
Example #1 PDO_SQLSRV DSN examples
The following example shows how to connecto to a specified MS SQL Server database:
$c = new PDO("sqlsrv:Server=localhost;Database=testdb", "UserName", "Password"); The following example shows how to connect to a MS SQL Server database on a specified port:
$c = new PDO("sqlsrv:Server=localhost,1521;Database=testdb", "UserName", "Password"); The following example shows how to connecto to a SQL Azure database with server ID 12345abcde. Note that when you connect to SQL Azure with PDO, your username will be UserName@12345abcde (UserName@ServerId).
$c = new PDO("sqlsrv:Server=12345abcde.database.windows.net;Database=testdb", "UserName@12345abcde", "Password");