It's so simple when you figure it out

Two war stories, one telling a tale on my colleague Bobby, another on me.

Bobby was testing out some PHP code on a Linux machine, trying to insert new rows into a SQL Server table. The code ran without error, but on the Windows machine where the database resides, Enterprise Manager wasn't seeing the updates.

I suggested adding a SELECT COUNT(*) statement before and after the INSERT. The row count was incrementing by one each time. Odd, that. The changes were being made locally, but not globally. Was it network latency? A Microsoft bug?

He called back later, sheepish. He forgot he had duplicated everything onto an Access database for testing. This was the one the PHP code was updating. Enterprise Manager was looking at the original copy.

OK, my turn to blush.

I've been trying for a day and a half to get past the error message Fatal error: Call to undefined function odbc_connect().

Google and Yahoo, normally my friends, this time took me off in all sorts of unsuitable directions. You have to reinstall Apache. You have to recompile PHP. Finally, I switched search engines and found what I needed to know at Answers.com:

You have to add the line extension=odbc.so to the php.ini file, then restart Apache.

And behold! It's working! Gosh, I feel dumb some days.