REPOST: Setting up PHP to connect to a MS SQL Server using PDO_ODBC in Ubuntu

For those who are not familiar of ODBC like I was, its basically an API that lets you connect to other databases. PDO has its ODBC driver which in turn ODBC has its own also. To connect to MS SQL Server, we are using FreeTDS which is a library that lets you accomplish this.

sudo apt-get install freetds-bin freetds-common tdsodbc odbcinst php5-odbc unixodbc
sudo cp /usr/share/tdsodbc/odbcinst.ini /etc/
sudo apache2ctl restart

Connect using PDO in PHP:

$c = new PDO('odbc:Driver=FreeTDS; Server=hostname_or_ip; Port=port; Database=database_name; UID=username; PWD=password;');

Note: You will not see any reference of FreeTDS (the odbc driver) in the ODBC section of your PHP Info so don't weird out.

Reference:
https://secure.kitserve.org.uk/content/accessing-microsoft-sql-server-php-ubuntu-using-pdo-odbc-and-freetds