mssql

Adams 12 Five Star Schools is very pleased to announce our newly-redesigned, SQL Server-powered Drupal Web site! Our site exemplifies the power and flexibility of Drupal. It is also speaks to the quality of community that helps develop, instruct, and support the Drupal project. Without this exceptional and active community, our site would not have been possible. We're continually working to improve our site and welcome your feedback. (Sorry for the delay, I had promised this write up a while ago but have just now had the time to put it together).

Abstract

Drupal 6.0 is revamped with Schema API, so what's next for Drupal 7.x? PDO for sure! With this powerful data-access abstraction layer, workload will much reduced for DB abstraction layer designers and developers, and finally benefit our contribute developers and end users.

By the way, together with the decision of Drupal 7.x + PDO, there is also some voice about moving PostgreSQL (and so other potential databases support, e.g. Oracle, DB2, MSSQL, etc) support away from core, but contribute; on the other hand, add official SQLite support into Drupal core, together with MySQL.

Is this really a good idea? Or even if it is possible? As an existing Drupal + PostgreSQL users, what will this affect your daily work? As a potential customer of Drupal + Oracle/DB2/MSSQL/etc, is this a good new for you, or just an evil? I would like to provide some brief idea for you within this article.

So, I've had some free time latley, and I've started back on the database API layers (DB2 and SQL Server currently).
However, I have found 2 disturbing issues.

Overview
First, I'm currently exploring the following 3 ways to connect to sql server:
1. FreeTDS
2. php_mssql driver
3. MSFT SQL Driver ( See pcorbetts posting for a link to the driver )

1. PHP 5.2.5 breaks support for SQL Server

So, you want to speed up your large site? Well, start by cleaning up your SQL if you're accessing large tables. We are running Drupal on top of MS-SQL for a client. We have one table that has 7.5 millinon rows in it. Now, I had mentioned what I am about to talk about in another post before, but I know have some hard numbers to base it off of.
So anyway, this table had 7.5+ million rows, and the page was loading mighty slow. Running it 10 times, Devel query showed where I was bleeding...more like gushing time:

<

ol>

Ok, i'll be the one to call the pink elephant in the room.....stored procedures do exisit. There I said it. :). With MySQL 5 starting to support them, Postgres has had them, and the push latley to start using a wider array and more robust DB's (oracle, mssql, DB2), it is time I think to start thinking about a database abstraction layer to handel stored procedures. I'm thinking perhaps something like this:

/**
* @param $proc_name Name of the stored proc.
* @param $args Argements to send to the proc indexed by the variables name. e.g. array('name' => 'Jim Smith');

Ok, so I finally got around to it. Drupal 5.0 (6.0-dev) MS SQL support. I am hoping this thread can be a sort of 'behind the scenes' working group with official patches posted to Drupal.org.

NOTE: This has been tested with:

• PHP 5.1.6
• SQL Server Standard 2005
• ntwdblib.dll v. 2000.80.194.0 (you will need this updated version and not the one that comes with your php install)

With that said, on to the patch. It is definalty a hefty one at 51KB. So, a quick over-view of what it does.
First, a few files have been added:

<

ul>

Ok, today I am going to start to consolidate all of these diff. db support tasks into my sandbox for a pre-release and discussion setup. Right now, there are about 5 different, and very good, threads about Oracle and MS-SQL support. However, there is still no central place for everyone to consolidate their code and work on the DB's. This needs to happen so no one goes off and re-invents the wheen. So, today I am going to sift through the threads, integrate as much as the code togather as I can, and commit them to my sandbox.

I personally currently have an Oracle installation and a MS-SQL installation working very well.