Connect to IBM DB2 on PHP via ODBC

This was done and tested on a Linux (CentOS) system running PHP 4.

1. Configure PHP with ODBC support.

   yum install php4-odbc unixODBC

   You should check that it is successfully installed by doing phpinfo().

2. Obtain the latest DB2 ODBC driver from IBM. You can download it from here. Lookout for Driver for ODBC and CLI.
3. Untar it at a dir. I chose /opt/db2cli.
4. Edit odbcinst.ini to define a new ODBC connection. The file should be located at /etc/odbcinst.ini. Add the following:

   [DB2]
   Description     = DB2 Driver
   Driver      	= /opt/db2cli/lib/libdb2.so
   FileUsage       = 1
   DontDLClose     = 1

5. You can now connect to IBM DB2 on PHP via ODBC. You can use the following PHP script to test the connection:

   $database = 'DBNAME';
   $hostname = 'HOST';
   $port = 'PORT';
   $user = 'USERNAME';
   $password = 'PASSWORD';
   $driver = 'DB2';
   $conn_string = "DRIVER=\{$driver};DATABASE=$database;HOSTNAME=$hostname;PORT=$port;PROTOCOL=TCPIP;UID=$user;PWD=$password;";
   
   if (!$db = odbc_connect ($conn_string, $user, $password)) echo 'Error!';
   else echo 'Success!';
   
   odbc_close($db);

You can read about more information on PHP ODBC functions via PHP’s Manual.

Though this guide is based on PHP4, this should also work for PHP5 with some minor modifications. Otherwise, you can also check out DB2 extension of PHP.

U-Zyn tweets about PHP, database, cloud computing and how to procrastinate productively at @uzyn.