Extensions for Joomla! 3.x • Re: Extension Installs fail when using SQL Server or Azure

Hi,



Having played with the hosted demo for a day, I have just done a completely clean install on a newly built server created just for this.



System: Server 2012R2

Web Server: Apache 2.4.12 Win64

PHP: 5.6.8 x64

Database Server: SQL Server 2008R2 (not on localhost)

Joomla version: 3.4.1. Installed with the packaged Learn Joomla sample data.



A bit of a nightmare of getting it all to play nicely together, MS [[drive]] for PHP do not work with PHPx64, and before you say it, yes I know it states that x64 builds of PHP are currently experimental but as the entire platform is 64 bit and as this is currently still just a test, I decided to stick with 64 bit throughout.



I finally got it installed only to find the kind of MSSQL issues you have been mentioning.



Almost immediately I noticed that the site search crashed. There is a fix for this on http://ift.tt/1ba5ylb although as a total newbie to Joomla, I didn't find it very clear how to apply the fix. The download zip file contains over 5500 files but no instructions what to do with them (that I could find). I just replaced the 3 files mentioned in the article and search now seems to work. Was I supposed to overwrite everything? not too sure.



I then found I couldn't add the extensions that I had been using on the demo hosted site. I tried JCE and BT Google Maps , each failed but with errors on different tables and fields.



As this is only a sandboxed lab environment, I used the workarounds below because any impact would be minimal (worse case scenario, just install it again, I have everything documented).



Add constraints to set the default to empty for the offending fields.



For BT Google Maps

Code:

ALTER TABLE dbo.<TablePrefix>_assets ADD CONSTRAINT DF_<TablePrefix>_assets_rules DEFAULT '' FOR rules;

For JCE, I had to add 3 constraints

Code:

ALTER TABLE db_datawriter.<TablePrefix>_extensions ADD CONSTRAINT DF_<TablePrefix>_extensions_custom_data DEFAULT '' FOR custom_data;

Code:

ALTER TABLE db_datawriter.<TablePrefix>_menu ADD CONSTRAINT DF_<TablePrefix>_menu_path DEFAULT '' FOR path;

Code:

ALTER TABLE db_datawriter.<TablePrefix>_menu ADD CONSTRAINT DF_<TablePrefix>_menu_params DEFAULT '' FOR params;

Both of the above extensions seem to have now been added OK and are working although annoyingly the ?tp=1 at the end of the URL doesn't seem to work on my version so I am having one or two issues placing items such as the Google maps component.



Having had this installation on for less than a day I have no doubt that I haven't come across all the MSSQL issues yet and am going to come across many more. I agree that as MSSQL is supposed to be supported, having it infested with bugs isn't great. I noticed a comment on issues.joomla.org that Part of the issue is that we have a lack of developers who work with the SQL Server environment, maybe they should. I am sure there are many organisations such as mine which have a dedicated MSSQL database server or server cluster and don't necessarily want to bring up another instance of a different flavour database. It isn't as if MSSQL is a minor or unheard of piece of kit and given that there are free editions available, destruction testing against this brand would simply add to the popularity of Joomla.



Speaking personally, I wouldn't even consider using Joomla if it doesn't work with MSSQL.

Statistics: Posted by ez-robs — Sun Apr 19, 2015 6:15 am

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