Re: Fwd: Fwd: [PHP-DB] MySQLi connections

Fergus Gibson wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Fergus Gibson <fgibson75@gmail.com> Date: Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 11:55 AM Subject: Re: Fwd: [PHP-DB] MySQLi connections To: "J. Hill" <jh@thefirm.biz> On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 3:12 PM, J. Hill <jh@thefirm.biz> wrote:

I am used to creating a class and a database handle for functions to use, but I inherited an intranet that just uses a single "$mysqli = mysqli_connect ...." in a global main file and the just uses "global $mysqli" in all of it's functions (several hundred) that interact with the database.

[...]

Could anyone point me towards any documentation on why such a structure is bad?

It's bad if you ever want to use something other than mysqli! Imagine your company switching to another database server. You'd have to rewrite code in hundreds of functions! This is where a database wrapper class could have saved a lot of headache. As it is, the least expensive way to migrate databases permitted by the original programmer's choice would be to write an adapter class and substitute it in place of mysqli and hope there are no SQL incompatibilities. Not very efficient though.

You're going to have a lot more problems with changing db servers than just search/replac'ing mysqli calls. Eg - 'LIMIT' - the format is different for postgres, mssql doesn't have it nor does oracle. -- Postgresql & php tutorials http://www.designmagick.com/