FreeTDS Development Group

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden AT freetds.org>]

Patrick Corbett wrote:
> I was speaking ealier to Frank Kromann about using FreeTDS on a windows
> machine with PHP in order to avoid an issue that limits data pulled from
> SQL Server 2000 with PHP from a varchar field to 255 characters using
> php_mssql.dll. Normally, I would use Kromann's php_dblib.dll to fix
> this, but because apparently this library doesn't allow named instances
> for a server name in the freetds.conf file, and because I have to
> connect to my server with named instances (e.g., server\instance_name),
> I'm not sure what I can do.

http://www.freetds.org/userguide/freetdsconf.htm#FREETDSCONFFORMAT

Just put the instance name in freetds.conf and make sure you're using TDS
version 7.0 or 8.0.  

It took me a minute to understand your question.  Then I understood: if
you use Microsoft's ntwdblib.dll, you get TDS version 4.2, which limits
varchars to 255 characters.  If you use FreeTDS, you get an updated
protocol and 8000-byte varchars.  

I never thought I'd see FreeTDS supplant the vendor's own library....

HTH.

--jkl