PHP MS SQL connection error

[darksteel21]

Hi All,

i am trying to connect to a MS SQL Server using PHP on a Sun Solaris server. Currently I am using FreeTDS in connecting PHP to MsSQL. But i am having this error message:
Warning: mssql_connect() [function.mssql-connect]: Unable to connect to server:

Can anyone help me.

Thanks,

Mark Tan

[Dormilich]

do you get an SQLSTATE error code with that? you could try to connect via PDO, that normally throws more descriptive errors.

[darksteel21]

I guess my current PHP was not compiled with PDO support. And i am not familiar with PDO. I've succesfully installed FreeTDS on our Solaris server and i could connect in MSSQL server using FreeTDS with these commands :
/usr/local/freetds/bin/tsql -S <ip of our MS SQL server> -U <User SQL> -P<Password>
But when i try to connect using a php script :
$con = mssql_connect([server], [username], [password]") or die("can't connect to MS SQL Server Error: " . mssql_get_last_message());
i am having these errors : Warning: mssql_connect() [function.mssql-connect]: Unable to connect to server:
i already recompiled my php with :
--with-mssql
what seems to be the problem?did i overlooked some php configurations and settings?

[Dormilich]

I guess my current PHP was not compiled with PDO support.

which PHP version do you have?

without a better error message I cannot really tell, maybe you can get a clue from the mssql settings in php.ini. I can imagine that you have to tell PHP to use FreeTDS. on the other hand side, if you have PHP 5.2+, PHP has PDO support by default and PDO does connect to MSSQL (given the MSSQL/DBLIB Driver is installed)

EDIT: read the 3rd user comment here, it seems to deal with your issue.

[darksteel21]

Oh i see... I am using PHP 5.1 and already told PHP to use FreeTDS with : --with-mssql=/usr/local/freetds configuration, if i upgrade my current PHP there might be a lot of changes and affected web apps on our porduction server. I'll try to look at the PDO. But why theres a notification on (http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.pdo-dblib.php) php.net saying :

WARNING
This extension is EXPERIMENTAL. The behaviour of this extension including the names of its functions and any other documentation surrounding this extension may change without notice in a future release of PHP. This extension should be used at your own risk.

[Dormilich]

further down they recommend using the DBLIB driver for MS SQL.