Deeper Integration with phpBB

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by Peter Galli on May 10, 2010 11:38am

More good news on the Interoperability front: the new phpBB release is now available for installation from the Windows Web Application Gallery and Web Platform Installer (Web PI) for Windows, IIS and SQL Server.

Version 3.0.7-PL1 of phpBB takes advantage of a number of features for PHP applications on the Microsoft Web Platform with Windows, IIS and SQL Server, including SQL Server Driver for PHP 1.1, which provides key interoperability for PHP applications to use SQL Server or SQL Azure for data storage, and is released under the OSI approved MS-PL license and available on CodePlex.

It also takes advantage of WinCache Extension for PHP 1.0.1, which provides increased performance for PHP applications on Windows and IIS, and which is released under the BSD license and available from the PHP Extension Community Library (PECL) website.

This is just another example of Microsoft's commitment to enabling interoperability of the Microsoft Web Platform. As part of the process, Microsoft contributed a patch to the phpBB project to allow it to interoperate with SQL Server using Microsoft's SQL Server Driver for PHP, and then worked very closely with members of the phpBB core team to accept our patch contribution. 

The SQL Server Driver for PHP 1.1, released in October 2009, provides UTF-8 support, Multiple Active Record Sets (MARS) and the option to leverage SQL Azure and to deploy as a full or partial cloud solution.

Microsoft also worked with the phpBB Core Team to help enable phpBB to leverage the WinCache Extension for PHP. WinCache provides performance benefits for PHP applications on Windows and IIS and is released under the BSD license, with the source hosted and maintained on the PHP Extension Community Library (PECL).

For more information on this news, you can read the Web Platform blog, the SQL Server PHP blog, Josh Holmes' blog, and the phpBB blog.

This release by the phpBB community is another great example of how Microsoft is working with the PHP community to provide higher levels of interoperability and performance as well as providing customers the choice of running the applications they want on the Microsoft Web Platform.