We have reports that deal with millions of records, and whether they run for 4 minutes or 20, I have only seen robust results from the PHP/MSSQL combination. (I know, 20 minutes is a long time...I didn't say that all of my SQL statements were robust (-: )
Regarding remote access to SQL server 7, as far as I know the only way to access SQL Server remotely is from another machine also running SQL server. From SQL Server Enterprise Manager you can add databases to access, setting the login properties to either use Windows authentication or SQL server authentication. SQL Server has great documentation, their Books Online, and is, I believe, a pretty easy app to figure out. Remotely you can add databases, change users, run queries, etc...again the only downside is that you need to be on windows running SQL Server on the client. I've looked for a remote SQL Server tool that could run on OSX or Linux, but have not yet found one that meets all my needs...anyone?
You asked if your setup will slow down the application. I have to ask, is the DB server going to be behind a firewall? I'm no networking guru, but we had some speed issues initially when our DB server was behine the firewall and the apache server was not. It seemed to me that there was time spent moving data back and forth, as now that we have both machines behind the firewall things have speeded up considerably. The real lesson I learned, however, was to make every connection count, as in get as much data as possible per query and lean on the Linux box to process, sort, count, etc if I could rather than getting a small chunk of data, going back to the DB, etc etc. Considering how easy it is to remotely administer a Linux machine, it's too bad you can't have it with the DB machine.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by your last question regarding PHP's mssql functions vs. ODBC. I do not and have never used ODBC to connect PHP to SQL Server, although in our situation I think it would add a layer of complexity and possibly slow things down a bit, but that's just a guess. I'm assuming you were asking if using connecting via ODBC is slower.
See:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mssql-connect.php
http://www.phpbuilder.net/columns/alberto20000919.php3
for more specific info regarding setup and mssql libraries.
Hope this was helpful. Once you get started you should be able to find plenty of info in the php-db mailing list archive regarding how to make this setup work.
Ruth Zhai wrote:
Hi Everyone,
I have spent a few hours searching on the internet, but still can not get the information I need. So I turn to you for help.
I will be doing a web site which has a lot of data from a remote mssql server. The scripts will be in php and run on Linux. As requirements, the mssql will stay at the client's internal network, and linux server will be right here with me. For your information, we are considering using broad band connection for the web server although this has not been finalized. The web site will initially have 3000 clients, and the db will be updated on daily basis. For me, this is challenge because this is the first time for me to use remote db server, first time to use mssql server and first time to use combination of open source and MS products. Forgive me if I don't ask proper questions. The followings are my questions:
1. Will this combination cause a lot of problems? Will it be stable enough?
2. Because the db server is not connected to the internet, I am not sure what options I have in terms of connection to the db. Would some one point me a direction or tutorial about this?
3. Will remote access slow down the application a lot?
3. PHP has functions for mssql. Does any one know how those compare with ODBC?
I would appreciate if you could share your experience with me or give me your opinion on the above issues.
Thank you very much in advance.
Ruth
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