Connecting to a SQL Database from PHP and Java

Not every software application in the world is written in .NET and with Microsoft technologies, and of course, Azure could be used from another development environment and language. Azure is a collection of services, so the ability to use them all or a mix between them and other cloud providers is up to the consumer of the service. From a developer's perspective, the SQL Database is a fully managed relation database service, so a .NET client should connect to it like a PHP or Java application could.

It is just a matter of drivers and software components that mediate between the application and the data layer, implementing the product-specific feature of a particular Relational Database Management System (RDBMS).

In this short recipe, we connect to the SQL Database using PHP and Java.

Getting ready

In this recipe, we will use:

• Visual Studio and IIS Express as the PHP environment

• Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org/) as the Java environment

• PHP 5.4 (http...