> I can't help but notice that MSSQL, Sybase, and Sybase CT-Lib each have their
> own PHP extension. What I wonder if many people have /not/ noticed is that
> two of these extensions implement the same C API on different platforms (mssql
> targetted for Windows systems, sybase targetted for Unix systems), and all
> three implement the same database protocol on the wire.
This was true for MSSQL 4.x and 6.x but the databases and the protocol have evolved
different in the two products (MSSQL vs. Sybase) since. Microsoft has not updated
DBLibrary since version 6.x so there is a few features available in 7.0 and 2000 there
is unsupported in the PHP extension. If Microsoft decides not to update DBLibrary I
will start rewriting the extension using a more up to date protocol in order to
support all features. I would furthermore prefer to develop the extension to work from
both Win32 and *nix clients.
> In light of this, would it not be to everyone's advantage to consolidate
> developer efforts and merge the ext/mssql and ext/sybase modules? (Providing
> appropriate PHP_FALIAS wrappers for backwards compat, of course.) I can't
> imagine that there is so much difference between these two codebases that we
> need one extension with a .dsp file and one extension with a config.m4 file.
The MSSQL extension (on Win32 only) do have a few functions more but these could be
ported into one of the Sybase extensions.
> Are there other reasons why PHP developers would prefer not to combine these
> two extensions into one?
I dont know muct about Subase and Sybase-ct but I agrre that these extension should be
combined into one, with aliases and functionality from the mssql extension to allow
access to MSSQL Server 4.x and 6.x from Win32 and *nix clients.
- Frank
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