to ora_bind or not to ora_bind

Hi, sorry to post just after subscribing but I didn't find anything in the faqs. I have to port an Oracle-based system to MySQL and am now investigating how to get rid of the Oracle specialities. I neither wrote the system nor do I fully understand how it's working yet, so I might miss something. The biggest trouble spot seems to be the use of the ora_bind functions as in the following example: $e = db_parse ($curs, "insert into usercomments values "."(:pkey,:pser,:pnam,:pema,:pdat,:ptxt,:psub,:pref) ") if ( ! $e ):

      $err = "Error in insert statement!";
      $errn = $curs;

else:

      db_bind ($curs, "param_key", ":pkey", 6, 1);
      db_bind ($curs, "param_ser", ":pser", 16, 1);
      db_bind ($curs, "param_nam", ":pnam", 128, 1);
      db_bind ($curs, "param_ema", ":pema", 128, 1);
      db_bind ($curs, "param_dat", ":pdat", 64, 1);
      db_bind ($curs, "param_txt", ":ptxt", 1024, 1);
      db_bind ($curs, "param_sub", ":psub", 128, 1);
      db_bind ($curs, "param_ref", ":pref", 16, 1);
      if (!db_exec ($curs)):
         $err = "Could not execute insert statement, sorry!";
         $errn = $curs;
      else:
      endif;

endif; The problem is that I don't really see what the use of the ora_bind is here. Is there anything that would forbid the port to: mysql_query("insert into usercomments values( $param_key, $param_ser, ..., $param_ref)"); Or am I missing something substantial here? Thanks a lot, Christian -- Christian Schneider <schneider@rrz.uni-koeln.de> Zentrum für Angewandte Informatik --.. .- .. -.- Universitätsweiter Service .-. .-. --.. -.- + Universität zu Köln + Robert-Koch-Str. 10 + D-50931 Köln + Tel. +49 221 478 7021 +