SQLServer as a System Database

General Notes

• When connecting to Azure SQL, you'll need to include the hostname in the user credentials (e.g. username@hostname, rather than just username).

Linux

Notes

Beginning in 2016, Microsoft made the official SQLSRV driver available for Linux. If you are using Ubuntu 16.04 or later, Debian 8 or later, RHEL7/CentOS7 or later you can install this driver. This is highly preferred over the DBLIB/FreeTDS driver (php-sybase.)

SQLSRV

• DreamFactory specific instructions for Ubuntu 16.04:
  • SQLSRV on Ubuntu 16.04
• Microsoft Documentation, including instructions for other platforms:
  • MS Platform Instructions
  • Microsoft PHP SQLSRV on GitHub

DBLIB/FreeTDS

• In your package manager, install the PHP Sybase package.
• Ubuntu/Debian example:

  $ sudo apt-get install php5-sybase

• No other configuration is necessary, unless you intend to use Microsoft SQL Server as your DreamFactory system database.

Using Microsoft SQL Server as the system database with DBLIB/FreeTDS

NOTE: These changes only apply if you are using the dblib/freetds driver to connect to SQL Server. Now that Microsoft has made the sqlsrv driver available on Linux, Mac, and Windows, we highly recommend using it rather than dblib. These instructions are not necessary if you use sqlsrv.

If you intend to use Microsoft SQL Server as the DreamFactory system database, you will need to make a couple of FreeTDS configuration changes. First, locate your freetds.conf file. In a default Debian/Ubuntu/Mint install, this file is in /etc/freetds/freetds.conf. You'll be editing the [global] section of the file. Here's what the default looks like:

[global]
        # TDS protocol version
;       tds version = 4.2
 
        # Whether to write a TDSDUMP file for diagnostic purposes
        # (setting this to /tmp is insecure on a multi-user system)
;       dump file = /tmp/freetds.log
;       debug flags = 0xffff
 
        # Command and connection timeouts
;       timeout = 10
;       connect timeout = 10
 
        # If you get out-of-memory errors, it may mean that your client
        # is trying to allocate a huge buffer for a TEXT field.  
        # Try setting 'text size' to a more reasonable limit 
        text size = 64512

You need to edit/add values for the tds version, text size, and client charset. If any of these lines start with a semi-colon (;) it will need to be removed.

[global]
        tds version = 7.2
 
        text size = 20971520
 
        client charset = UTF-8

Next you will need to set up a locales.conf file. There is an example one included in the freetds examples. Copy it to /etc/freetds/:

sudo cp /usr/share/doc/freetds-common/examples/locales.conf /etc/freetds/

Then you need to edit this file with date formatting that matches that of your DreamFactory configuration. Since I use the default DreamFactory configuration, my changes to this file look like this:

[default]
   date format = %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%z

Last step: you need to restart your php processing service (if you're using one, such as php5-fpm) and your web server process (nginx or apache2.)

Now you can being using Microsoft SQL Server as your system database.

Windows

Note: Starting in DreamFactory 2.3, drivers and extensions required for PHP 7 will need to be used, as reflected in these instructions.

• Download and install Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server (if not already installed):
  • Version 11 is available here.
  • Version 13 is available here.
  • Version 17 is available here.

Click the System Requirements link on each respective page to determine which driver version is compatible with your Windows operating system. For instance Windows Server 2016 users will want to download version 17. In 32-bit environments, install the x86 package. In 64-bit environments, install the x64 package.

• Download and install the appropriate SQL Server Native Client (if not already installed and SQL Server is not hosted on the same machine as DreamFactory). In 32-bit environments, install the x86 package. In 64-bit environments, install the x64 package. Currently the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client is available here, and the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Native Client is available here. If you are running Windows Server 2016 you'll need to instead download this version, selecting ENU\x64\sqlncli.msi from the download list and ignoring the other options.

• DreamFactory uses PHP PDO drivers for DB connections. Full documentation on PDO_SQLSRV is available here. You will need to download and extract the Microsoft Drivers for PHP for SQL Server. Currently these are available here. The version you download will depend upon both your operating system version and PHP version. You can learn more about which version is required here.

• Copy the DLLs for your version of PHP into your PHP's extensions directory. E.g., for PHP 7, the DLLs are php_pdo_sqlsrv_7_ts_XX.dll and php_sqlsrv_7_ts.dll_XX. These files were extracted from the download in the previous step. The _XX postfixed to each file name is a placeholder for _x64 or _x86. If you are integrating with IIS as your web server, use the non-thread-safe DLLs instead (php_pdo_sqlsrv_7_nts.dll and php_sqlsrv_7_nts.dll).

• Enable the copied DLLs in your php.ini file. Using the chosen DLLs from step #4, you would add them to C:\Bitnami\dreamfactory-X.X.X-X\php\php.ini like so:
  • extension=php_pdo_sqlsrv_7_ts_XX.dll
  • extension=php_sqlsrv_7_ts_XX.dll

The file names mentioned in php.ini must match *exactly* the names of the files placed into PHP's extension directory!

Note: If you are using DreamFactory 2.1.0-4 or earlier, you will require drivers and extensions for PHP 5.5 (see below).

• Enable the copied DLLs in your php.ini file. Using the example DLLs from step #4, you would add the following lines to C:\Bitnami\dreamfactory-X.X.X-X\php\php.ini and save:
  • extension=php_pdo_sqlsrv_55_ts.dll
  • extension=php_sqlsrv_55_ts.dll
• Restart your web server to apply these PHP configuration changes.