Joomla! 2.5 Adds SQL Server Support!

Article
01/26/2012

This is a short post to shareexciting news: Jooma! 2.5, which shipped earlier this week, now has support for SQL Server! Of course, this release contains lots more goodies, but the addition of a database abstraction layer that supports multiple databases is a huge step (support for other databases may arrive quickly now that Joomla! ison a 6-month ship cycle). This will remove headaches for anyone deploying Joomla! in multiplatform environments. You can read all about the release on the Joomla! Web site: Joomla! 2.5 Released with Extra Features and Easy Updates. I think this quote from the announcement sums up the impact of this release better than I could:

“Multi-database support is a huge step forward for Joomla, which is already powering more than 1.6 million websites worldwide. It ensures companies and organization, both large and small, will save even more money and time by adopting Joomla…No longer will Joomla developers be tied down to a particular database or have to spend more money and time integrating other software to get Joomla to communicate with their database. This enhances Joomla’s scalability immensely.” - Ryan Ozimek, President of Open Source Matters

On behalf of the folks here at Microsoft, I want to give a huge thanks to the many volunteers in the Joomla! community who spent countless hours testing the changes that went into this release, as well as to the Joomla! core team for ultimately getting the changes in. I’d also like to give a huge thanks to the team at Hooduku, who played a key role in adding the multi-database support and developed the Joomla! interface to SQL Server.

The last bit of exciting news is that you can use the Microsoft Web Platform Installer to install Joomla! 2.5. Download the Web PI here (it's a quick download): https://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx. Once you’ve done that, launch the Web PI and search for “joomla” in the search box…