Re: PEAR and DB abstraction layer (was: PHPLIB)

Hello Troels, On 27-Jun-00 18:38:46, you wrote: >Manuel Lemos <mlemos@acm.org> wrote: >> Precedence: bulk >(Shouldn't that be part of the message header?) My mailer is broken and doesn't assume that is a header line. That header is supposed to avoid most auto-response messages. >> While you are at it, you may want to look into Metabase which is also a PHP >> database abstraction package that goes a little beyond other existing >> abstraction packages. >[...] >Sounds very interesting. >Wauw. PHP now has four DB abstraction layers that I have heard of: > - PEAR's (will probably work from PHP 4.0.1) > - PHPLIB's > - Metabase > - http://phpdb.linuxave.net/ >It would be great if at least some of the abstraction layer could unite. Believe me that I tried, but the conclusion is that each one wants to go their way and have their package to prevail instead of cooperating to develop a single dominant database abstraction for PHP like there is for Perl, Java, Python, etc.. There have been intense discussions on this that ended in a impass, so there is no point to bring that up again. Anyway, Metabase will be having new and exciting components soon. Some of them are ready and are just awaiting for me to have some to document them. Here's sample: o Database form access: a class that is able to store and retrieve information from database tables and forms. It is able to: - Insert new records taken from fields of submitted forms - Retrieve information from database records to initialize form fields. - Delete database records using form field values as search criteria. - Update database records from form fields that had their values changed by the user. - Retrieving the list of options for select type form fields. o Generic database result listing wrapper (simple table wrapper like many). o A full database table editor that uses the previous components to list the table contents and present that in a way that lets the user easily view, add, edit and delete records in way that is completely controlled by the programmer. o Automatic database based form validation checks. Upcoming Metabase drivers will let you do things that so far have been hard to do in PHP but there is great demand for them, like connection pooling and database independent remote access with the possibility of compression (data transfer efficiency) and encryption tunneling (data security). Some of these components and drivers could be implemented with other database abstraction packages but I can't justify the extra time that it would take me to support them. Since there seems to be no hope for PHP database abstraction package convergence, I'm afraid you will either use Metabase to benefit from these capabilities or wait until the developers of the other packages catch-up. >Or maybe there is a market for a database abstraction layer abstraction >layer... It would be silly but that's the way it seems to be! :-) Regards, Manuel Lemos Web Programming Components using PHP Classes. Look at: http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/?user=mlemos@acm.org -- E-mail: mlemos@acm.org URL: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/ PGP key: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/ManuelLemos.pgp --