Re: [PHP4BETA] Re: Couldn't find your reference

From Chad's message it may look for some people that he quoted me. I just wanted to note that this quotation ("Bingo" etc.) is of Slashdot, not of me, as well as other things from Slashdot that I quoted after I was asked (personally) by some readers who couldn't find these references. Chad wrote: > > Bingo. This (database interface dependency) IMO is the biggest problem > > that needs to be solved with PHP. It supports a wide variety of > > databases with APIs that are very similar in function, but they're all > > different. We do a lot of work with MySQL and Oracle around here, and > > with Perl/DBI you can often go from one to the other with no changes at > > all (except the connection string). It couldn't possibly be easier. > > Just to comment, I felt this comment was a bit much. Database > Abstraction is a good options to have, but I think the biggest problem > with DBI is that it's ALL you have. Sure you can call functions, but > then your code is no longer portable. In a case like that I think it's > better to not abstract the API, but to abstract the database > interactivity itself by having your app call generic routines like > getData and then have a plug in script/module that can get the data > however it wishes from the database. This is the only way to truly allow > your app to work cross database. However, in many cases a simple > abstraction of the API is enough, but I'm not convinced this is > something that would be that advantageous to put in php as opposed to > just doing an abstraction in php (such as phplib and phpDB do). > Performance might be a bit better with it native, but with php4, is it > really going to matter? I think it should be more like what perl does, > where it's not a part of the core language, but rather another module > that can be downloaded. But perl has a bit more advanced idea of > packages, so that might be something that needs to be addressed. -- Eli Marmor