text: Q:
  
  Does MSSQL interfere with MySQL on LAMP SERVER?
  
  I'm currently working on a project that requires me to connect remotely to a MSSQL database on a different server. 
  After some research and crawling of this site and google I think one of the problems is that the current LAMP server I am working on using Ubuntu 14.04.2 doesn't have the extensions on PHP needed to connect to MSSQL. I think I know what extensions are needed but I am apprehensive of following through with the installation through fear of losing current MySQL configs and databases.
  Is this an irrational fear that I shouldn't worry about (i.e installing what PHP needs to run MSSQL functions doesn't affect MySQL in anyway) or am I right to be apprehensive?
  Thanks,
  
  A:
  
  PHP packages has support for connecting to MSSQL server.  The support is included in php5-sybase package.  In PHP 5.6 you can still use the obsolete MSSQL functions, but I urge you to use pdo_dblib extension (it's compiled with freetds library, but it can be used to connect to MSSQL server) as the old extension has been dropped in PHP 7.
  Here's the link to the documentation: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pdo-dblib.php and don't forget to use dblib as your DSN prefix as the extension is compiled with FreeTDS on Ubuntu. 
  The additional modules won't affect existing modules.  If you install f.e. php5-pgsql it won't affect existing MySQL module, same goes with pdo-dblib.  It will just add more functions.
  
  