JimmyLi.net

Maybeme,

Thanks for sharing! I’ll try it out in the next couple of days when I get the chance and update my post for anyone else who might be interested in the file also. 🙂

Brian,

You got it to work fine? That’s great. Did you have to do anything special by any chance aside from adding the extension to php.ini? I took a shot at it but was not able to get it to work. I have the same server specs also. It was a while ago so I don’t remember exactly what the start-up error was, but didn’t have the chance to try it again. I’ll post an update to this post with a link to the file.

Jojo,

Sorry for my small typo. It’s “file”, not “files”. ntwdblib.dll is a library file in the PHP directory that is needed to talk to the MS SQL Server.

You can try to search online to find the file. I, however, have not gotten it to work. I read somewhere that the old php_mssql.dll library is supposedly really outdated and lacked maintenance.
I’ve tried the one I’ve uploaded on this post at:
http://jimmyli.net/2009/03/php-unable-to-connect-to-mssql/
It’s for PHP 5.2.x, so I don’t know if it’ll work if you’re using PHP 5.3.x.

I recommend using Microsoft’s official SQL Server Driver for PHP now that they have one, regardless of whether you’re on PHP 5.2 or 5.3.
Here’s a post I made about it for PHP 5.3:
http://jimmyli.net/2009/09/finally-a-working-sql-server-driver-for-php-5-3/
I was able to get it to work successfully on PHP 5.3.

Anil,

On the test server I used I have the same server and software specs you listed, which is with SQL Server 2000. I haven’t touched this setup in a while, but I think I was able to get it to work with the latest SQL Server Driver for PHP, even if it’s stated for SQL Server 2005. Have you tried it out yet?

I’ll check my server again when I have the chance and I’ll post here again.

Anil,

I too think that compiling your own PHP with the old MSSQL extension is not a good idea, especially to make unofficial features work, and the extension is considered buggy.

Anyway, I looked into my test install today and here’s what I found. Note that I did mess around a lot with installing and uninstalling things before and I don’t remember exactly what I’ve done. The server’s a mess. But I believe here’s what I did that did get PHP5.3 talking to MSSQL 2000. And this is an official method supported by Microsoft.

First, make sure your PHP5.3 and IIS installation is working as expected.

Visit this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=B33D2C78-1059-4CE2-B80D-2343C099BCB4
Scroll down (or search) on the page for this section: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Native Client
You’ll note the description of it stating that it can connect to SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008. Download MSI package appropriate for your server, and install it.

Visit this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ccdf728b-1ea0-48a8-a84a-5052214caad9
– Download the file (button above the Quick Details box): SQLServerDriverForPHP11.EXE
– Executing it will extract a folder of files. Put in anywhere you want (e.g. Desktop). In it will be a set of DLLs. Choose the one appropriate for the PHP package you are using (look at the readme if you need more info.)
– Copy the appropriate DLL and paste it in your PHP’s ext folder.
– Open up your php.ini and add the line to the extensions section enable the DLL extension you copied for PHP, and save.
e.g. extension=php_sqlsrv_53_nts_vc9.dll

Restart your web server for all settings to take affect.
Run a phpinfo(); script and check to make sure “sqlsrv” is there somewhere.
In that SQL Server Driver folder you extracted earlier, double-click and run the help file, SQLServerDriverForPHP.chm.
This will pretty much have everything you need to know in getting your PHP to talk to SQL Server including the API functions to use in your script.

Hope that works!
If that works for you, maybe I’ll add a new post here detailing that so it can help others. Thanks!

Anil,
Seems like you got the SQL Server library working in PHP, at least! So you’re definitely close! It sounds like it can talk to the DB server too, just not logging in.
According to the docs it should log in using Windows Authentication credentials. I use SQL Server Authentication, though.

If you could post the code on how you’re connecting I can help take a look at it.

Did you also try including the DOMAIN name your Windows User is on?

Your code should probably look something like this:

$connectionInfo = array('UID'=>'DOMAIN/Username', 'PWD'=>'password', 'Database'=>'Northwind');
$conn = sqlsrv_connect('MY-DBSERVER', $connectionInfo);
if ($conn === false) die( print_r( sqlsrv_errors() ) );

Anil,
Sorry, I’m not sure what I posted might work or not since I now found this page:
How to: Connect Using Windows Authentication
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/cc296205%28v=SQL.90%29.aspx

Try to follow what’s on that page and see if it helps.
Perhaps you did already and reported the IUSR_ bit?

I think an important part mentioned is:
It is important to notice that in most scenarios, this means that the Web server’s process identity or thread identity (if the Web server is using impersonation) is used to connect to the server, not an end-user’s identity.

Would that mean that this user (IUSR_?) needs to be given permissions to the databases you’re using?

There is a web version of the SQL Server Driver documentation if it’s more convenient for you:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee229551%28v=SQL.10%29.aspx

I see. I don’t have experience with SharePoint so I don’t know how the database is set up and how users work. The SQL Server 2000 I have access to is a company installation that I don’t have admin rights to, so I can’t really authorize a Windows account for it.

Do you have admin rights to your database server, or request rights? If so, what if you tried setting up a local database user and using SQL Server Authentication instead?

By the way, is your PHP Server and your SQL Server on the same box, or separate?

Great! Let me know how it goes, and if you get any further on Windows Auth.
I took a shot yesterday at just leaving the user/pass out of the connection, and I got a similar error you got for login failed, except mine said that ‘(null)’ was not a valid user…

I’m glad that everything is working out. Just to give you a heads up on something I came upon which gave me a huge headache and took a while to figure out. Using SQL Server 2000 and this SQL Server Driver, you cannot call another statement while actively in a statement. Here’s a quick example of what I’m talking about:

$result = query('...');
while ($row = fetch_array($result)) {
  $result2 = query('...');  // this will fail
  while ($line = fetch_array($result)) {
    // more code
  }
}

This is because SQL Server 2000 does not support Multiple Active Result Set (MARS), which is only available from 2005+. Do a search for more info. But if you come upon such a scenario, you’ll have to either open up another SQL connection, or save the results from the first statement, then run the second statement separately. I will write an article about it with more details, but I just want to give you a heads up since you have this combo. The old PHP 5.2 MSSQL extension apparently allowed us to do this nested statement without complaining. I’m not sure how, but I imagined it must have opened up an extra connection transparently.

As for the null user, I just left out the username/password part of the connection array (as mentioned on the docs with using Windows Auth), and it said (null) was not a valid user. (And I’m sure there is no such user.) I use IIS6.0 and SQL Server 2000, like yours.

I guess the route you choose depends on what you’re doing. I chose to separate the loop and save the results temporarily. Somehow I feel that opening up another connection just uses up more resource and memory. (I have no tests to back that case up.) If your application is public and will have many users, it might even hit that database connection limit quicker (whatever that limit may be). Mine’s an internal app, so I’m not really worried about it.

Yep, my IIS and SQL Server are two different servers. I’m sure that’s why it thinks I’m trying to log in as a null user.

Just want to mention that there is a newer version of the SQL Server Driver for PHP out (v2.0):
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=80e44913-24b4-4113-8807-caae6cf2ca05

Just swapping out the DLL for the new one and restarting the web server should be enough, or if you want to rewrite it using the PDO option, that’s available too. (I have not tried out PDO.)

Sam,

WordPress uses a MySQL database. This article is about Microsoft SQL Server database. So that’s not the cause. You’ll need a MySQL database server to run WordPress.