http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=20098

A brief Google search pulls up a download page from Microsoft with the newest SQL Server drivers for PHP:

In the package you download, there are about 9 different files. You only need to install 1 or 2 and there are no instructions as to which one is the one to install.

In my case, even installing ALL of them didn’t work. My PHPInfo() said there was sql server support, but it wouldn’t connect to the sql server.

FINALLY, I found a single post that explained it. Turned out my PHP version which was installed by IIS7 was too old! For SqlServer to work – you have to have PHP 5.2.4 or newer.
The help instructions that come with it aren’t specific enough.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/ssdsgetstarted/thread/5fa1215f-5104-40f3-ac5c-872c4812f416

Lastly, here’s a great link that goes over how to actually use the sqlserver connection. Good god!

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/whitepaper-accessing-sql-server-databases-from-php.aspx

One other thing to note if you’re used to working with .NET or Classic ASP. In PHP the field names are case sensitive.

Here’s the link:
http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid87_gci1353663_mem1,00.html

Example from above article:
SELECT e1.EmployeeID, e2.FirstName, e2.LastName, e1.JobTitle
FROM OPENROWSET(
'SQLNCLI',
'Server=SqlSrv1;Trusted_Connection=yes;',
'SELECT EmployeeID, FirstName, LastName, JobTitle
FROM AdventureWorks.HumanResources.vEmployee'
) AS e1
INNER JOIN OPENROWSET(
'Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0',
'C:\Data\Employees.mdb'; 'admin';' ',
'SELECT EmployeeID, FirstName, LastName, JobTitle
FROM Employees'
) AS e2
ON e1.EmployeeID = e2.EmployeeID
ORDER BY e2.LastName, e2.FirstName

Here’s the MSDN link on OPENROWSET.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190312.aspx

select count(*) from Table1 where Field Not In (Select Field from Table2)

All other ideas failing, I finally resorted to writing a query using a temp table variable:
set nocount on;
declare @Tables table (
PK int IDENTITY(1,1),
Field1 varchar(100), Field2 varchar(100)
);
insert into @Tables(Field1 , Field2 )

set nocount off;
select count(*) as Count, Field1 from @Tables
where Field2 is Null
Group by Field1
Having Count(*) < 2;

Talk about complicated! If you have any other better ways of doing this – please let me know!

It has some great sql functions that I’ve spent hours looking for in the past (or had to write myself):

• Split function
• SplitLines
• Within (not from python)
• EndsWith
• StartsWith
• Contains (not from python)
• Join
• Parts (not from python)
• Partition
• RPartition

Anyway, I bookmarked it to go back to in the future.

It’s below:

declare @RowCount int, @tablename varchar(100)
declare @Tables table (
PK int IDENTITY(1,1),
tablename varchar(100),
processed bit
)
INSERT into @Tables (tablename)
SELECT TABLE_NAME from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES where TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE' and TABLE_NAME not like 'dt%' order by TABLE_NAME asc

select * from @Space order by convert(int, replace(data, ' MB', '')) desc

For the past 2-3 years I’ve been working under the idea that @@Identity would return the identity of the most recently added row in the table you were just working with. Not so – it will give you the identity of the most recently added row in the entire database! I believe, however, that @@identity is limited to working within the connection to the database. For instance, if you have 2 scripts and they both add a row to the database, they would be using separate connections to the database and thus wouldn’t be confused. If your database uses triggers and your trigger adds a row in another table, @@identity will return the identity of that row, not the one you want.

The alternative offered in the article is to use scope_identity(). It acts the same way, only without this little idiosyncrasy.

You may want to check it out:

http://www.mssqlcity.com/Articles/General/choose_data_type.htm

They just released a deal where they are giving it away for free until September 1st 2006 (That’s when they will release a new version of the product.)

I downloaded it and tried it out, and it works great – very handy to have when you are dealing with tables with lots of fields, etc. It works with Microsoft Query Analyzer, SQL Server 2005 Management Studio, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio .NET 2003, SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Manager, UltraEdit32.

I personally tried it out with Microsoft Query Analyzer.

Here’s the link to the download page: SQL Prompt

This article has some code to do just that: http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/SQL_to_Access_Data_Export.asp

UPDATE Table1
SET Table1.Title = Table2.Title
FROM Table1, Table2
where Table1.ID = Table2.ID

If you are using aliases – for instance if you are updating a table you are joining to itself, use this code:

UPDATE Table1Alias
SET Table1Alias.Title = Table2Alias.Title
FROM Table1 as Table1Alias, Table2 as Table2Alias
where Table1Alias.ID = Table2Alias.ID

Another scenario you may encounter is where you want to update a table, but use an inner join to further filter the rows you want to update.

Here’s an example of how to do this:

UPDATE Table1 Set Field1 = Value
FROM Table1 as t1
INNER JOIN Table2 as t2 on t1.Field2 = t2.Field2
WHERE Field3 = Value

That seems too simple, but it eluded me for a long time.