Why won't my server connect to a remote MSSQL server using PHP mssql_connect?

Question

I've had to move an app we wrote for a client to a new server and a remote connection I was initiating with PHP mssql_connect has ceased to work. I noticed that PHP wasn't compiled with mssql so I asked the server admin to install it. I can verify that it's now installed via PHP info but I now get a consistent "Unable to connect to server" error from mssql_connect.

Here's the very simple PHP script I'm running:

$myServer = "myserver.com:5000";
$myUser = "myusername";
$myPass = "mypassword";

$dbhandle = mssql_connect($myServer, $myUser, $myPass)
or die("Couldn't connect to SQL Server on $myServer. Error: " . mssql_get_last_message());

I've confirmed that the credentials are still correct but for whatever reason it seems that mssql_connect just isn't doing it's thing. I'm wondering if there's something that the admin has forgotton to do having installed the extension and FreeTDS. Any pointers greatly appreciated! :)

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!

After all that it turned out to be the FreeTDS protocol version number as specified in /usr/local/freetds/etc/freetds.conf, line number 13 had to be uncommented. That was it! :)

Answer 1

After all that it turned out to be the FreeTDS protocol version number as specified in /usr/local/freetds/etc/freetds.conf, line number 13 had to be uncommented. That was it! :)

Answer 2

There's a good chance that remote connections are disabled on the server where the server is installed. Have you checked whether you are actually able to connect to the DB server remotely, from the IP address of the webserver that attempts to connect to it? Usually, at least in most shared hosting schemes, the database server only accepts connections from localhost. You'd need to add the IP address of the webserver to a whitelist (usually in the server's configuration) to allow connections from the outside.