PHP 5 AND SQL SERVER DRIVERS

While this is nothing new or big news Microsoft has managed to release PHP 5 drivers for its SQL Server platforms. We have not ran PHP on a Windows server in a very long time and so we decided to give it a shot and honestly it was a total pain in the ass but only because we are not use to the IIS 7 web server. Honestly we like IIS 6 better less complicated and more to the point. Sure IIS 7 is great for those .NET applications but not everything else. For instance we tried to install and run Coldfusion 8 on IIS 7 and again a total pain in the ass while on IIS 6 it installed like a dream.

Back to the main point, PHP runs fairly well on IIS 7 but if you don’t know your way around IIS 7 then you might have some issues with it. The simple PHP scripts we tried worked perfectly well but they were not as efficient as PHP and MySQL 5. In all honesty if your going to use PHP with a database I would stick to the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) it just works better and a ton faster.

But if your a Small Business Server user and want to go the PHP route instead of .NET or ASPX then sure PHP will get the job done on IIS/Windows Server. The best part about it is that the driver is

released under the Apache license.

Straight from their site:

“The Microsoft Drivers for PHP for SQL Server are PHP 5 extensions that allows for the reading and writing of SQL Server data from within PHP scripts. The release contains two drivers, the SQLSRV driver and the PDO_SQLSRV driver. The SQLSRV extension provides a procedural interface while the PDO_SQLSRV extension implements PDO for accessing data in all editions of SQL Server 2005 and later (including SQL Azure). These drivers rely on the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Native Client’s ODBC driver to handle the low-level communication with SQL Server.”

Here is some more information on the driver if you guys are interested in it.

http://sqlsrvphp.codeplex.com/

The Invisible Spider-Web

What is the one thing we apparently can’t live without? Is not our taste in expensive clothing, is not being able to dine in fancy restaurants, and is dame sure not our jobs… ok so maybe we can’t live without a job but we sure would love to.  The one thing we simply can’t live without now a days is our cell phones.

Modern society as we now have come to know it; is an invisible spider-web constructed by an infinite number of satellites crunching numbers all day long.  And we are trap in this web while our carriers eat way at us every month like a predatory back-widow but we love every minute of it… unless you don’t have an unlimited plan then you hate every minute you have gone over.  But the overages are not a deterrent as we are in love with our phones.

Marriage use to be the old ball and chain but now it is our cell phones.  Everyone is just a number away at any given time of the day… The days of seclusions have been over for more than two and a half decades that’s longer than most of you reading this have been alive.  The option to detach is no longer there, or better yet we don’t allow ourselves that option because a day without our phones seems like a preposterous proposition.  Like most marriages that come to an abrupt end  so does the life span of our cell phones every two to four years we trade up or marry something which in our minds seems better; be it more sexy or for more intelligent features we take the leap. Not to generalize marriages but by the end of the cycle we are bitter with our decision and want to take the leap again.

The invisible spider-web seems to encompass everything life oriented as most people are addicted to their cell phones.  Some examples of our addictions include the fact that we spend more money on accessories than the price of our phones.  It began with a simple car charger, then a spare battery, then a screen protector, then a stereo Bluetooth adapter, now you are up to a different case for each day of the week.  We have more than 30 apps install that we don’t use or simply don’t need; I don’t need an app to help me find my car every morning, or calculated a tip at a restaurant.  We have an alarm setup to tell us when to do everything in our day. We cut back on things we need in order to afford a 100 plus dollars phone bill.  We read about our phone on our phone.  If we drop it on the floor we feel like we drop a child. When we feel our pockets and don’t feel our phones our hearts skip a beat in terror at the thought that we just lose it.  An the last place on the planet where you were save and totally alone is no longer available because yes you use your phone in the toilet as well.

For something that is not physical the invisible spider-web has the strongest grip, brutal if you will.  We are the architects of our lives and we have traveled into popular cultural bliss without thinking twice.  And for those of you who have not gotten there yet I’m sure the GPS on your phone will lend you a hand.