14 DAY TRIAL // The interoperability evolution featured by Drupal 7 in relation to the Microsoft platform has caused the Redmond company to welcome the latest iteration of the open source CMS (content management system). In the view of Jean-Paoli, General Manager for Interoperability Strategy, Drupal 7 marks an important milestone specifically because of the improvements related to interoperability with the Microsoft Platform.
One example of Drupal 7’s evolution with direct impact on customers running the software giant’s products is support for Microsoft’s data platform.
“It shouldn’t be too surprising that our favorite addition is support for Microsoft SQL Server (version 2005 or later), which we announced last year at DrupalCon when we shipped the community technology preview (CTP) of the SQL Server Driver for PHP 2.0 with PDO support.
“The new driver was then released in August. Special thanks to Commerce Guys, who actually developed SQL Server support in Drupal and contributed the code,” Jean-Paoli notes.
The SQL Server Driver for PHP 2.0 is key in allowing developers that take advantage of various PHP applications, Drupal 7 included, to rely on the PDO “PHP style” enjoy SQL Server database interoperability.
“This reduces the complexity of targeting multiple databases and makes it easier for PHP developers to take advantage of SQL Server’s business intelligence & reporting feature (which is also included in the free SQL Server Express edition), as well as SQL Azure features like exposing OData feeds,” Jean-Paoli added.
Additional improvements are related to Drupal 7’s installation packages and modules. Ahead of version 7 such Drupal extensions were packaged by default as TGZ archives.
This is no longer the case. Windows users will now be able to take advantage of installation packages and modules as ZIP archives, enabling them to get cozy with Drupal 7.
“Along the same lines, the Drupal 7 Windows package now includes a “web.config” file designed specifically for Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), which is now listed in the supported web servers for Drupal 7,” Jean-Paoli explained.
Drupal 7 is available through the community project site, of course. At the same time, customers, developers, partners, etc. that want to leverage Drupal 7 on Windows can do so by taking advantage of the distributions included into the the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI) or WebMatrix.