title: Connecting to an SQL Server with Mac OS X (Laravel)
body: <p>I'm trying to connect to a corporate SQL Server using Laravel on my Mac running Mountain Lion 10.8. I have XAMPP installed with PHP 5.4.19. My list of enabled extensions are:</p>
  
  <pre><code>bcmath
  bz2
  calendar
  Core
  ctype
  curl
  date
  dba
  dom
  ereg
  exif
  fileinfo
  filter
  ftp
  gd
  gettext
  hash
  iconv
  imap
  json
  ldap
  libxml
  mbstring
  mcrypt
  mhash
  mssql
  mysql
  mysqli
  mysqlnd
  openssl
  pcntl
  pcre
  PDO
  pdo_mysql
  pdo_pgsql
  pdo_sqlite
  Phar
  posix
  Reflection
  session
  shmop
  SimpleXML
  soap
  sockets
  SPL
  sqlite3
  standard
  sybase_ct
  sysvsem
  sysvshm
  tokenizer
  wddx
  xml
  xmlreader
  xmlwriter
  xsl
  zip
  zlib
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Unfortunately Laravel has no support for MSSQL which I used in the past with Codeigniter to connect to the server. Which driver am I supposed to specify in Laravel's database configuration file with FreeTDS installed? Do I use ODBC or another method?</p>
  
  <pre><code>'sqlsrv' =&gt; array(
          'driver'   =&gt; 'sqlsrv',
          'host'     =&gt; 'host',
          'database' =&gt; '******',
          'username' =&gt; '****',
          'password' =&gt; '************',
          'prefix'   =&gt; '',
      ),
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I see lots of Mac users using Laravel and I'm really wondering how they manage if they ever have to connect to an SQL Server or any sort of Microsoft SQL product without MSSQL support.</p>
  
  <p>Could anyone please give me some direction or tutorial on how I would possibly connect?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: Sorry forgot to specify. I installed FreeTDS with MacPorts with the command:</p>
  
  <pre><code>sudo port install freetds +mssql +odbc +universal
  </code></pre>