You know that SQL Server could be configured to accept connections with different TCP/IP port numbers. See other tutorial collections on how to view and configure SQL Server TCP/IP protocol.

If you installed SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with default settings, it should be running with instance name of "SQLEXPRESS" and port number of "1269" You can use the mssql_connect() function to connect to the server in 3 ways:

$con = mssql_connect('LOCALHOST','login','pass');

$con = mssql_connect('LOCALHOSTSQLEXPRESS','login','pass');

$con = mssql_connect('LOCALHOST,1269','login','pass');

Other ways of entering the server name and port number will not work. The PHP manual has this statement: "servername - The MS SQL server. It can also include a port number. e.g. hostname:port." The example is really for non-Windows systems. Try the following testing PHP script to find out: