SQL Anywhere includes support for PHP stored procedures and functions. A PHP stored procedure or function behaves the same as a SQL stored procedure or function except that the code for the procedure or function is written in PHP and the execution of the procedure or function takes place outside the database server (that is, within a PHP executable instance). There is a separate instance of the PHP executable for each connection that uses PHP stored procedures and functions. This behavior is quite different from Java stored procedures and functions. For Java, there is one instance of the Java VM for each database rather than one instance per connection. The other major difference between PHP and Java is that PHP stored procedures do not return result sets, whereas Java stored procedures can return result sets. PHP only returns an object of type LONG VARCHAR, which is the output of the PHP script.

To use PHP in the database, you must install PHP, you must install the SQL Anywhere PHP driver, you must install the SQL Anywhere PHP External Environment module, and you must configure PHP to be able to locate and load these components. The following section describes how to do this.