Programming PHP, 3rd Edition

Using PHP to Access a Database

There are two ways to access databases from PHP. One is to use a database-specific extension; the other is to use the database-independent PDO (PHP Data Objects) library. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach.

If you use a database-specific extension, your code is intimately tied to the database you’re using. For example, the MySQL extension’s function names, parameters, error handling, and so on are completely different from those of the other database extensions. If you want to move your database from MySQL to PostgreSQL, it will involve significant changes to your code. PDO, on the other hand, hides the database-specific functions from you with an abstraction layer, so moving between database systems can be as simple as changing one line of your program or your php.ini file.

The portability of an abstraction layer like the PDO library comes at a price, however, as code that uses it is also typically a little slower than code that uses a native database-specific extension.

Keep in mind that an abstraction layer does absolutely nothing when it comes to making sure your actual SQL queries are portable. If your application uses any sort of nongeneric SQL, you’ll have to do significant work to convert your queries from one database to another. We will be looking briefly at both approaches to database interfaces in this chapter and then look at alternative methods to managing dynamic content for the Web.