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Known Vendor Issues

This section describes known compatability issues with all the supported database vendors:

PostgreSQL

DateTime, DateTimeTz and Time Types

Postgres has a variable return format for the datatype TIMESTAMP(n) and TIME(n) if microseconds are allowed (n > 0). Whenever you save a value with microseconds = 0. PostgreSQL will return this value in the format:

$ 2010-10-10 10:10:10 (Y-m-d H:i:s)

However if you save a value with microseconds it will return the full representation:

$ 2010-10-10 10:10:10.123456 (Y-m-d H:i:s.u)

Using the DateTime, DateTimeTz or Time type with microseconds enabled columns can lead to errors because internally types expect the exact format 'Y-m-d H:i:s' in combination with DateTime::createFromFormat(). This method is twice a fast as passing the date to the constructor of DateTime.

This is why Doctrine always wants to create the time related types without microseconds:

  • DateTime to TIMESTAMP(0) WITHOUT TIME ZONE
  • DateTimeTz to TIMESTAMP(0) WITH TIME ZONE
  • Time to TIME(0) WITHOUT TIME ZONE

If you do not let Doctrine create the date column types and rather use types with microseconds you have replace the DateTime, DateTimeTz and Time types with a more liberal DateTime parser that detects the format automatically:

use Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type;

Type::overrideType('datetime', 'Doctrine\DBAL\Types\VarDateTimeType');
Type::overrideType('datetimetz', 'Doctrine\DBAL\Types\VarDateTimeType');
Type::overrideType('time', 'Doctrine\DBAL\Types\VarDateTimeType');

Timezones and DateTimeTz

Postgres does not save the actual Timezone Name but UTC-Offsets. The difference is subtle but can be potentially very nasty. Derick Rethans explains it very well in a blog post of his.

MySQL

DateTimeTz

MySQL does not support saving timezones or offsets. The DateTimeTz type therefore behave like the DateTime type.

Sqlite

DateTimeTz

Sqlite does not support saving timezones or offsets. The DateTimeTz type therefore behave like the DateTime type.

IBM DB2

DateTimeTz

DB2 does not save the actual Timezone Name but UTC-Offsets. The difference is subtle but can be potentially very nasty. Derick Rethans explains it very well in a blog post of his.

Oracle

DateTimeTz

Oracle does not save the actual Timezone Name but UTC-Offsets. The difference is subtle but can be potentially very nasty. Derick Rethans explains it very well in a blog post of his.

OCI8: SQL Queries with Question Marks

We had to implement a question mark to named parameter translation inside the OCI8 DBAL Driver. It works as a very simple parser with two states: Inside Literal, Outside Literal. From our perspective it should be working in all cases, but you have to be careful with certain queries:

1SELECT * FROM users WHERE name = 'bar?'

Could in case of a bug with the parser be rewritten into:

1SELECT * FROM users WHERE name = 'bar:oci1'

For this reason you should always use prepared statements with Oracle OCI8, never use string literals inside the queries. A query for the user 'bar?' should look like:

1$sql = 'SELECT * FROM users WHERE name = ?' $stmt = $conn->prepare($sql); $stmt->bindValue(1, 'bar?'); $stmt->execute();
2
3
4

OCI-LOB instances

Doctrine 2 always requests CLOB columns as strings, so that you as a developer never get access to the OCI-LOB instance. Since we are using prepared statements for all write operations inside the ORM, using strings instead of the OCI-LOB does not cause any problems.

Microsoft SQL Server

Unique and NULL

Microsoft SQL Server takes Unique very seriously. There is only ever one NULL allowed contrary to the standard where you can have multiple NULLs in a unique column.

DateTime, DateTimeTz and Time Types

SQL Server has a variable return format for the datatype DATETIME(n) if microseconds are allowed (n > 0). Whenever you save a value with microseconds = 0.

If you do not let Doctrine create the date column types and rather use types with microseconds you have replace the DateTime, DateTimeTz and Time types with a more liberal DateTime parser that detects the format automatically:

use Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type;

Type::overrideType('datetime', 'Doctrine\DBAL\Types\VarDateTime');
Type::overrideType('datetimetz', 'Doctrine\DBAL\Types\VarDateTime');
Type::overrideType('time', 'Doctrine\DBAL\Types\VarDateTime');