Changes
[Added]
- Support for PHP 8.0
- Support for macOS Big Sur, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10 and Alpine 3.12
- Support for GB18030 locale [#1115](
https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1115)
- Feature Request [#924](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/issues/924) - extended PDO errorinfo to include [additional odbc messages if available](https://docs.microsoft.com/sql/connect/php/pdo-errorinfo) - pull request [#1133](
https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1133)
- [Data Classification with rank info](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/wiki/Features#dataClass), which requires [MS ODBC Driver 17.4.2+](https://docs.microsoft.com/sql/connect/odbc/download-odbc-driver-for-sql-server) and [SQL Server 2019](https://www.microsoft.com/sql-server/sql-server-2019) or an Azure SQL instance that supports it
- [Azure Active Directory Service Principal authentication support](https://docs.microsoft.com/sql/connect/php/azure-active-directory), which requires [MS ODBC Driver 17.7+](https://docs.microsoft.com/sql/connect/odbc/download-odbc-driver-for-sql-server)
[Removed]
- Dropped support for PHP 7.2
- Dropped support for macOS High Sierra, Ubuntu 19.10 and Debian 8
[Fixed]
- Pull Request [#1127](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1127) - removed TSRMLS macros in preparation for PHP 8 by remicollet
- Pull Request [#1136](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1136) - improved performance when handling decimal numbers as inputs or outputs and removed unncessary conversions for numeric values
- Pull Request [#1143](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1143) - if an exception occurs when executing a query, it will not change the output parameters
- Pull Request [#1144](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1144) - use the correct C types when binding output parameters with integer values
- Pull Request [#1146](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1146) - improved performance when fetching numbers using client buffers
- Pull Request [#1165](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1165) - set query timeout without using LOCK TIMEOUT, which saves an extra trip to the server
- Issue [#1170](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/issues/1170) - when fetching large data types such as ntext, check more than only the display size - pull request [#1172](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1172)
- Pull Request [#1205](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1205) - minimized compilation warnings on Linux and macOS
- Pull Request [#1209](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1209) - fixed a bug when fetching varbinary max fields as char or wide chars
- Issue [#1210](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/issues/1210) - switched from preview to beta terminology to enable Pickle support
- Issue [#1213](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/issues/1213) - the MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET in config files caused linker errors in macOS Big Sur - Pull Request [#1215](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1215)
- Pull Request [#1226](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1226) - replaced the problematic strlen function
- Pull Request [#1227](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/pull/1227) - addressed static code analyis issues
[Limitations]
- No support for inout / output params when using sql_variant type
- No support for inout / output params when formatting decimal values
- In Linux and macOS, setlocale() only takes effect if it is invoked before the first connection. Attempting to set the locale after connecting will not work
- Always Encrypted requires [MS ODBC Driver 17+](https://docs.microsoft.com/sql/connect/odbc/linux-mac/installing-the-microsoft-odbc-driver-for-sql-server)
- Only Windows Certificate Store and Azure Key Vault are supported. Custom Keystores are not yet supported
- Issue [#716](https://github.com/Microsoft/msphpsql/issues/716) - With Always Encrypted enabled, named parameters in subqueries are not supported
- Issue [#1050](https://github.com/microsoft/msphpsql/issues/1050) - With Always Encrypted enabled, insertion requires the column list for any tables with identity columns
- [Always Encrypted limitations](https://docs.microsoft.com/sql/connect/php/using-always-encrypted-php-drivers#limitations-of-the-php-drivers-when-using-always-encrypted)
[Known Issues]
- This preview release requires ODBC Driver 17.4.2 or above. Otherwise, a warning about failing to set an attribute may be suppressed when using an older ODBC driver.
- Connection pooling on Linux or macOS is not recommended with [unixODBC](http://www.unixodbc.org/) < 2.3.7
- When pooling is enabled in Linux or macOS
- unixODBC <= 2.3.4 (Linux and macOS) might not return proper diagnostic information, such as error messages, warnings and informative messages
- due to this unixODBC bug, fetch large data (such as xml, binary) as streams as a workaround. See the examples [here](https://github.com/Microsoft/msphpsql/wiki/Features#pooling)