Greetings, Alessandro.
In reply to Your message dated Monday, February 18, 2008, 19:36:39,

> I have a Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 box where MS SQL 2000 SP4 is
> running.
> I have a debian "sarge" box running apache 2.0.54-5sarge2 and
> libapache2-mod-php4 4.3.10-22.
> I have another debian "lenny" box running apache 2.2.8-1 and
> libapache2-mod-php 5 5.2.5-2.

> On the two servers I have the same php script that queries a database
> on the SQL server. One of the queried colums holds a datetime, and I
> have that the output format is different between the two servers:
> lenny server: Jun 7 2007 12:00:00:000AM
> sarge server: Thu Jun 7 00:00:00 2007 <- this is what I want

> I did not use any interpolation function (like strtotime()) but the
> outcome is different.
> How can I have the same output on the lenny server? Is this a server
> configuration issue or what else? I would like not to use any php
> function because I want to migrate my scripts from the old server to
> the new one with the minimum effort.

It is different in case of different intermediate layers between PHP and MS
SQL server.
I've had similar issue when dealing with dates from MSSQL.
After some reading and consultations, I'm end up with solution similar to one
posted above:

SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR, u.[create_date], 126) [create_date]
FROM [tablename] u;

It will give You best possible datetime representation I ever saw from the MSSQL.
It is XML-style "YYYY-MM-DD'T'HH:MM" format, like "2008-02-14T16:00"

Then You may just strtotime() that column and deal with "normal" timestamp and
format it as You wish using regular PHP *date() functions.


--
Sincerely Yours, AnrDaemon <anrdaemon@freemail.ru>

Sample:

public function execute($request, $DB = NULL)
{
$result = false;

if(class_exists('DB_common') && !$DB instanceof DB_common)
{
$this->setLastError(500, sprintf(LANG_DEAD_DB_EXPLAINED, 500, 'Database handler unknown'),
__FILE__, __LINE__-3, __FUNCTION__);
}
elseif(DB::isError($rc = $DB->getAll(MSSQL_LIST_CHARS, array($request))))
{
$this->setLastError(500, sprintf(LANG_DEAD_DB_EXPLAINED, $rc->getCode(), $rc->getUserInfo()),
__FILE__, __LINE__-3, __FUNCTION__);
}
else
{
$result = array();
foreach($rc as $char)
{
$char['create_date'] = strtotime($char['create_date']);
$char['login'] = strtotime($char['login']);
$char['logout'] = strtotime($char['logout']);
$result[] = $char;
}
}

return $result;
}