Up a Microsoft SQL creek without a Drupal paddle???

Posted by Scott Stiefvater on December 14, 2010 at 7:11pm

(Please forgive my poor use lingo. I'm not a developer and know just enough to be extremely dangerous.)

I need confirmation that if there is a fix short of a site rebuild in Drupal 7.0, that it is relatively easy/viable:
We have a big, complex site developed in Drupal 6.0 to run in MySQL on Apache. It must be made to run in Microsoft SQL.

Any not-to-jargonny, kind-a-plain-English, talk-to-me-like-I'm-a-4-year-old advice would be very appreciated.

Comments

You may want to check out:

Posted by coderintherye on December 14, 2010 at 7:38pm

You may want to check out: http://www.commerceguys.com/resources/articles/135
Along with: http://www.microsoft.com/web/drupal

Unfortunately, though those are geared towards 7, but honestly, it's going to be a pain either way, so if it was me I would probably just convert the site to D7 (and any needed modules) and be done with it, considering most of us will be moving to 7 within the year anyways.

On a side note, if you ever need to do the opposite (MS SQL -> MySQL) check out: http://www.coderintherye.com/convert-mssql-to-mysql

Drupal evangelist.
www.CoderintheRye.com

Drupal 7 - MS SQL

Posted by chasit on December 15, 2010 at 12:08am

Hi Scott,

We are currently looking at something similar. In essence what needs to be done is:

Build the port (driver) between Drupal 7 and SQL Server.
Upgrade your sites from Drupal 6 to 7.
Migrate any date from mySQL to MS SQL Server
Point Drupal 7 upgraded sites to MS SQL Server

As you can see from the link in the prior reply, currently there exists only very rough alpha version of such a port.

As said, we may be undertaking the port development for the community. Perhaps we should talk if this is also part of your needs,

Thanks Chasit

Posted by Scott Stiefvater on December 17, 2010 at 12:23am

I think our team is going to steer clear for now. We have another solution, but there is a small chance that we might come back to talk to you should we alter course.

d6 & sql server

Posted by netw3rker on December 17, 2010 at 12:19am

Hi Scott,

I put together a sql server db layer for drupal 6 about 5 months ago. I actually got as far as getting drupal to install & run with it, which is was pretty shocked could be done.

I hit a stumbling block that I couldn't overcome with how the menus are built, and tracked it down to a drupal 'feature' that relies on a mysql & postgres bug. (cant reference it off the top of my head now though).

If you and or your developers are interested in helping out and picking up where I left off, I'm happy to get the code to you and or start a project for it.
-Chris