How to Get the SQL Azure Session Tracing ID using PHP

The SQL Azure team recently posted a blog about SQL Azure and the Session Tracing ID. The short story about the Session Tracing ID is that it is a new property (a unique GUID) for connections to SQL Azure. The nice thing about it is that if you have a SQL Azure error, you can contact Azure Developer Support and they can use it to look-up the error and help figure out what caused it. (If you are just getting started with PHP and SQL Azure, see this post: Getting Started with PHP and SQL Azure.)

Getting the Session Tracing ID is easy with PHP…just execute the following query: SELECT CONVERT(NVARCHAR(36), CONTEXT_INFO()). Here’s the PHP code for doing this:

$server = "tcp:YourServerID.database.windows.net,1433";
$user = "YourUserName@YourServerID";
$pass = "YourPassword";
$database = "DatabaseName";
$connectionoptions = array("Database" => $database, "UID" => $user, "PWD" => $pass);
$conn = sqlsrv_connect($server, $connectionoptions);

if($conn === false)
{
die(print_r(sqlsrv_errors(), true));
}

$sql = "SELECT CONVERT(NVARCHAR(36), CONTEXT_INFO())";
$stmt = sqlsrv_query($conn, $sql);
$row = sqlsrv_fetch_array($stmt);
print_r($row);

Of course, the code above assumes you have the SQL Server Driver for PHP installed. And, if you are watching closely, you’ll notice that I didn’t have to include the “MultipleActiveResultSets”=> false in my connection options array…because SQL Azure now supports Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS).

That’s it for today…hope this can come in handy.

Thanks.

-Brian

Share this on Twitter