Digital Drip

Connecting with PHP to Sybase on WAMP Server

Sybase is one of those systems that can be sometimes finicky to setup on the client side. I was pleasantly surprised to see that PHP has support for Sybase. When you need to quickly prototype a new feature or give your user’s a quick dynamic report, PHP can be a great path to go.

It took a little research to get all the parts necessary, but the installation is very smooth.


  1. Install WAMP
  2. Install Sybase client (you want the open client; login/pass required)
  3. Update php.ini to: enable sybase extension (extension=php_sybase_ct.dll)
  4. specify location of sybase sql.ini file (sybase.interface_file = “c:\sybase\ini\sql.ini”)

To test the connection we can do a simle query against a table:

<?php
<html>
<head>
	<title>Sybase Test</title>
</head>
<body>

Testing execution<br />
<?= print_sybase_version() ?>

</body>
</html>

<?php
function print_sybase_version(){
	sybase_min_server_severity(20);
	$connection = sybase_connect('<server_alias>', '<username>', '<password>');

	if(!$connection){
		echo "couldn't make a connection";
	}else{
		$sql = "select CUSTOMER_NAME, CUSTOMER_STATUS from CUSTOMER order by CUSTOMER_NAME";
		$sql_result = sybase_query($sql, $connection);

		print "<table border=\"1\">";
		while($row = sybase_fetch_array($sql_result)){
			$name     = $row["CUSTOMER_NAME"];
			$status   = $row["CUSTOMER_STATUS"];

			print "<tr><td>$name></td><td>$status</td></tr>";
		}
		print "</table>";
	}
}
?>