PDO: setAttribute() has no effect with dblib and SQL Server

Question

I am connecting to an SQL Server database (SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 x64) from a Linux server running PHP 5.3.19 using the following lines:

$this->dbLink = new PDO(
    'dblib:host='.$this->host.';dbname='.$this->database,
    $this->user,
    $this->password,
    array(
        PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE => PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION,
    )
);

The connection works perfectly fine, except that ATTR_ERRMODE works as ERRMODE_WARNING, no matter what I do.

I have tried setting it using $this->dbLink->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION); right before the query call, but it has no effect.

If I use getAttribute() , I can confirm that PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE is indeed set to int(2) (ERRMODE_EXCEPTION), but I still get warnings and PHP keeps chugging along with obviously wrong queries.

Answer 1

The PDO_DBLIB is an experimental extension and should not be used for production environments.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.pdo-dblib.php

If you can, you should use PDO_SQLSRV instead:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.pdo-sqlsrv.php

Just change your connection setting from dblib: to the PDO_SQLSRV driver dns prefix sqlsrv:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.pdo-sqlsrv.connection.php

Let me know if that works for you