Looking for beta-testers: Metabase - DBMS independent package for installation and access to databases

Hello, Introduction For the last year I have been working on a complete package to provide means to install and access databases from PHP in DBMS independent manner. I named it Metabase. It may be thought as something similar to what already exist like PHPlib's database abstraction classes, but it goes much further beyhond it. This package is made of several classes: the database independent interface defined by a set of functions, the DBMS specific driver classes, the database schema parser class and the database schema installation and upgrading manager class. The database independent interface communicate with the DBMS specific drivers to provide access to the database. Database independent data types and values are mapped to DBMS specific data types and values. Features that are not directly supported by the DBMS may be emulated by the each driver. There interface functions to query the driver to determine what DBMS features are made available directly of by emulation. A custom XML based format was created to describe database schemas. The parser class is able to build parse and build the database schema structure in memory to be used by the manager class. The parser is also able to warn about table, field, sequence or index names that may be acceptable in some DBMSs but are not allowed in others. The manager class is able to take the database schema structure built by the parser class and install the database using the interface and driver classes for the specified DBMS. Furthermore, the manager class is able to take the compare two versions of a database schema (the currently installed and a new version to upgrade the schema to) and apply the changes to the schema without disturbing any data that was inserted after the database schema was installed or upgraded for the last time. The manager class is also able to output a DBMS independent dump of a given database that may be used to install the database again later in the same server or in a server of a different machine even being of a different type of DBMS. All this is pretty much developed and working. Several DBMS specific drivers were developed (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Mini-SQL, ODBC), others are being developed as I am writing this (Oracle, Sybase, Informix, IBM DB2, MS-SQL) and others will be developed later by myself or anybody willing to contribute. So, before I release the general public, I am looking for developers that are willing to test the package, specifically the drivers that are available. I am particularly interested in testers for drivers that are being done, but I will accept applications of anybody. If you are interested to participate in the beta-testing phase, please contact me ASAP by mailing to mlemos@acm.org. Make sure you mention the DBMS that you can test under which platforms. If you just want to use the package without having to contribute with testing, improving the existing drivers or developing new drivers, please be patient and hold on, this package will be made available for free some time soon. 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 --