Connecting to Microsoft SQL Server from Linux

Microsoft SQL Server is a relational SQL database server. It is a common choice where Microsoft technologies are used. However, Microsoft technologies typically only run on Microsoft products again and have traditionally always been closed. What to do where Windows is not used? How to connect from Linux to an MS SQL database server? It can. I'll show you how to do it.

The database never works by itself. When using a database, the following situations may occur:

• it is necessary to connect to MS SQL server from the application
• you need to explore the data in the database
• you need to switch from an MS SQL database to another multi-platform database

Since some time MS SQL server is running on Linux https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-setup?view=sql-server-2017

PHP and MS SQL - FreeTDS

One way to connect from a PHP script to an MSSQL server is to run FreeTDS and connect to an MS SQL server through it. So you need to get FreeTDS and MSSQL for PHP.

FreeTDS

FreeTDS is a set of libraries for Linux and other Unixes. These libraries allow programs to interact natively with Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase.

The configuration file for FreeTDS is in /etc/freetds.conf.
Its contents may look like this:

[servermssql]

host = 192.168.1.1
port = 7594
tds version = 7.0
client charset = UTF-8

PHP and MSSQL

Then you need to install the php-mssql package.
Here is a sample PHP script:

$link = mssql_pconnect('server'mssql, $mssql_user, $mssql_pass, true);
if (!$link || !mssql_select_db($mssql_db , $link)) {
    die('Unable to connect or select database!');
}
echo "connect established:\n";

// Do a simple query, select the version of
// MSSQL and print it.
$version = mssql_query('SELECT @@VERSION');
$row = mssql_fetch_array($version);

echo $row[0];
echo "---\n";
// Clean up
mssql_free_result($version);

 

GUI for MS SQL

For the graphical display of MS SQL database data, I have chosen two programs that are easy to install as they are available in the package:

• Dbeaver
• SQLELECTRON

Downloadable Beaver and SQL Electron download.

SQL Electron

The SQL Electron program is very easy to use, but simpler

Dbeaver

I preferred Dbeaver, it makes many options available and shows details from the database as well. For example, it also shows the table structure using DDL.