This section holds common questions about relation between PHP and databases. Yes, PHP can access virtually any database available today.
On Windows machines, you can simply use the included ODBC support and the correct ODBC driver.
On Unix machines, you can use the Sybase-CT driver to access Microsoft SQL Servers because they are (at least mostly) protocol-compatible. Sybase has made a » free version of the necessary libraries for Linux systems. For other Unix operating systems, you need to contact Sybase for the correct libraries. Also see the answer to the next question.
Yes. You already have all the tools you need if you are running entirely under Windows 9x/Me, or NT/2000, where you can use ODBC and Microsoft's ODBC drivers for Microsoft Access databases.
If you are running PHP on a Unix box and want to talk to MS Access on a Windows box you will need Unix ODBC drivers. » OpenLink Software has Unix-based ODBC drivers that can do this.
Another alternative is to use an SQL server that has Windows ODBC drivers and use that to store the data, which you can then access from Microsoft Access (using ODBC) and PHP (using the built in drivers), or to use an intermediary file format that Access and PHP both understand, such as flat files or dBase databases. On this point Tim Hayes from OpenLink software writes:
Using another database as an intermediary is not a good idea, when you can use ODBC from PHP straight to your database - i.e. with OpenLink's drivers. If you do need to use an intermediary file format, OpenLink have now released Virtuoso (a virtual database engine) for NT, Linux and other Unix platforms. Please visit our » website for a free download.
One option that has proved successful is to use MySQL and its MyODBC drivers on Windows and synchronizing the databases. Steve Lawrence writes:
Tips and Tricks:
There are three MySQL extensions, as described under the Choosing a MySQL API section. The old API should not be used, and one day it will be deprecated and eventually removed from PHP. It is a popular extension so this will be a slow process, but you are strongly encouraged to write all new code with either mysqli or PDO_MySQL.
Migration scripts are not available at this time, although the mysqli API contains both a procedural and OOP API, with the procedural version being similar to ext/mysql.
It is not possible to mix the extensions. So, for example, passing a mysqli connection to PDO_MySQL or ext/mysql will not work.
Yes. There will always be MySQL support in PHP of one kind or another. The only change in PHP 5 is that we are no longer bundling the client library itself. Some reasons in no particular order:
Most systems these days already have the client library installed.
Given the above, having multiple versions of the library can get messy. For example, if you link mod_auth_mysql against one version and PHP against another, and then enable both in Apache, you get a nice fat crash. Also, the bundled library didn't always play well with the installed server version. The most obvious symptom of this being disagreement over where to find the mysql.socket Unix domain socket file.
Maintenance was somewhat lax and it was falling further and further behind the released version.
Future versions of the library are under the GPL and thus we don't have an upgrade path since we cannot bundle a GPL'ed library in a BSD/Apache-style licensed project. A clean break in PHP 5 seemed like the best option.
This won't actually affect that many people. Unix users, at least the ones who know what they are doing, tend to always build PHP against their system's libmysqlclient library simply by adding the --with-mysql=/usr option when building PHP. Windows users may enable the extension php_mysql.dll inside php.ini. For more details, see the MySQL Reference for installation instructions. Also, be sure libmysql.dll is available to the system's PATH. For more details on how, read the FAQ on setting up the Windows systems PATH. Because libmysql.dll (and many other PHP related files) exist in the PHP folder, you'll want to add the PHP folder to your system's PATH.
You are trying to use a result identifier that is 0. The 0 indicates that your query failed for some reason. You need to check for errors after submitting a query and before you attempt to use the returned result identifier. The proper way to do this is with code similar to the following:
<?php
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM tables_priv");
if (!$result) {
echo mysql_error();
exit;
}
?>
<?php
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM tables_priv")
or die("Bad query: " . mysql_error());
?>