Re: PEAR DB documentation?

"David Osborne" <David.Osborne@nottingham.ac.uk> wrote in message news:20010329154621.F12058@unix.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk... > Where can I find user-level documentation for the DB database > abstraction layer in PEAR? The stuff on www.php.net pointed to from > http://pear.php.net/ seems to be aimed at developers and > I'm not ready > for that yet (unless someone has saved me some work and has a working DB > component for IngresII?) > > I'm not sure which database abstraction to use -- there seem to be so > many. Which seems to be the most mature and/or popular? DB? Metabase? > others? > > David David. The DB class in PEAR is pretty simple to use. I think there's documentation at <http://www.phpdoc.de/pear/index2.html>. I've used DB in the past, but since I'm writing a public-use app, I thought I'd use metabase, since it's DBMS-independent. DB seems to be the more traditional way of using database abstraction layers (as in Perl DBI and such); the interface is DBMS independent -- whether the SQL you write is DBMS-independent is another story. Metabase provides for means for making your SQL DBMS-independent, so it's really quite another step beyond traditional database abstraction. However, you seem to lose /a lot/ of features of whatever DBMS you use if you use metabase. It supports few data types (domains), and it doesn't support specifying primary keys or references. I'm trying to see if I can get by without them. If you're using an abstraction layer b/c your app may need to be reused with a different DBMS than you're currently using, metabase may be a good choice; however, if you're guaranteed you'll always use the same DBMS, I'd use PEAR's DB. Much simpler. Dean.