PHP error connecting to MS SQL database using PDO_DBLIB

Question

I am attempting to use PHP\'s PDO_DBLIB driver to connect to a remote database and am having some issues.

The database is connectable via the same environment using

Answer 1

Write port into freetds.conf directly for this host:

[RemoteServer]
    host = RemoteServer
    port = 1433

And leave php-code us is:

$conn = new PDO('dblib:dbname=TestDB;host=RemoteServer;charset=utf8', 'my_user', 'my_pass');

Answer 2

Turns out that it was a much simpler issue than I thought. For whatever reason, the development server was not using Port 1433 as the default port in the connection and was instead using Port 4000.

I discovered this by enabling the logs in the freetds.conf file and monitoring them as I was making the request.

Also, something to note: The DBLIB extension uses a colon (:) as a separator between the host and the port instead of the comma. Unfortunately, the error that you receive when you use a comma isn't very descriptive, so hopefully someone benefits from this discovery.