From the CertCities.com site this morning, there's a new piece to walk you through the connection of PHP to a Microsoft SQL server from a Linux machine.

The PHP-MySQL combination powers numerous high-profile Web sites worldwide. However, accessing other database platforms with PHP is occasionally frustrating, since the PHP documentation falters in less traveled areas, leaving it to the extensive user community to fill in the gaps.

He walks you through every step of the way, including building the PHP installation, setting up the database connection as well as FreeTDS (the "glue" between PHP and the SQL server). Once installed, making a query to the database of your choice is as simple as using the sybase_* functions to send the query and return the rows of results.

Using quite a few of the other databases with PHP is a simple task of compiling PHP with the correct libraries and it's all set. Convincing it to work with a Microsoft SQL server is a little bit more tricky, but is still quite simple, espcially if you follow his instructions.