PHP 8.x driver for SQLAnywhere

[justin_willey]

The question of a PHP v8 driver for SQL Anywhere is becoming very urgent.

The latest version for which a SQL Anywhere driver is available (here) is PHP v 7.4. Active support for this finished in November last year and Security Support finishes in November this year. The current support PHP version is 8.1 - details are here

We tried to compile a new version of the SQL Anywhere driver from source but without success. The main issue between v7.4 & v8.x relates to the thread safe behaviour and the removal of the Zend module from PHP. There also seem to be significant changes to the error handling. We tried to adapt the code to cope with these differences but were unable to make it work.

We have several customers who use PHP with SQL Anywhere who currently have no way forward.

[justin_willey]

apohl asked about this last year but there was no reply: https://sqlanywhere-forum.sap.com/questions/37078

[Oleksandr_Kushnirov]

I support. The lack of a driver stops the development of new solutions. SAP solve this problem

[chris_keating · Accepted solution]

A prebuilt PHP 8.0 driver has been posted and can be accessed at The SAP SQL Anywhere PHP Module.

[justin_willey · Accepted solution]

That's brilliant. Thanks

[justin_willey · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris - would it be possible to updated the posted source code. We could then have a go at producing an 8.1 version?

[chris_keating · Accepted solution]

This is in progress and will be posted shortly. If you have SQL Anywhere 17.0 Build 6230 or newer, the source code can be found in %sqlany17%\\sdk\\php.

[justin_willey · Accepted solution]

Thanks Chris

[chris_keating · Accepted solution]

I have updated the source code download today and it should now be available for download.

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

Chris, I rarely use SQL Anywhere with PHP but I'm somewhat surprised that

• the adaption to PHP 8 has already been made in June 2021 according to the code,
• and has been part of the software since a version released in December 2021 as of your comment,

but SQL Anywhere has not informed customers (or at least within this forum), although there were open requests for such an update?

That's too much "stealth marketing" in my opinion.

---

(I'm fully aware that this is not your task, so please do not take this personally in any way.)

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

That being said, in my 17.0.11.6933 install, the %sqlany17%\\sdk\\php directory still does contain the older code (2.0.18 / Support for PHP v7.3).

[chris_keating · Accepted solution]

Volker, I was also surprised to learn that php 8 was available since March 2021. I am currenting trying to understand why this support was not documented in a release note. The source in 6933 is current and equal to what I posted except the CHANGE file was not updated. I have corrected that for the next SP.

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the feedback, Chris.

FWIW, are there plans to add the PHP driver's code to https://github.com/sqlanywhere like (some of) the other interfaces?

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

I stand corrected - the files are version 2.0.19 (i.e. with PHP8 support), however copyright still refers to 2019, and for whatever reason, file modification dates tell "2019-02-21" for most of the files (except sqlanywhere.c), so I concluded they were not updated. After a file compare with the download, they actual are current.

As Chris has confirmed, the "changes" file is actually old, i.e. relates to 2.0.18.