The OLE-DB extension allows a PHP application running on Windows to connect to OLE-DB
data providers. It’s available for PHP 4.3, 4.4,
5.0, and 5.1.
What is OLE-DB? It’s a newish Microsoft technology designed to
supercede ODBC. In addition to RDBMS, it can retrieve information from
such diverse source as Indexing Server and Active Directory.
Why should you care? While PHP applications are usually deployed on a
Linux environment, for intranets Windows is an attractive enough choice
to many people. With this extension you can access functionalities on that platform that are particularly useful for office intranets. Indexing Server, for
example, let you easily implement a document search feature. Through
Active Directory you can retrieve information about people in the
office and so forth.
The extension is still in beta state. It’s been tested it with the following
providers:
* SQL Server
* Indexing Server
* Active Directory
* MS Access
* MS Excel
* MS Outlook
OLE-DB a fairly extensive framework, so likely bugs will be discovered
with more people kicking the tires. Any feedback will be dearly
appreciated.
The extension can be downloaded at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=171247&package_id=198554
