Suggestion about native DB support.

Hi all, If this is not the right place for my suggestion or this has been discussed before just let me know it and accept my apologies. I have a strong feeling that it would be a very good idea to ship PHP (*nix and Win) with some native, BUNDLED support for some DBM-files format. It can be very nice to have a native set of DBM-like functions available in PHP no matter the operating system or how PHP was compiled. The advantages are very easy to spot, for example applications storing "things" can provide several different storage handlers, MySQL and native-DBM and users will always be able to test the applications since they always have the native DBM functions installed. This is great for all kind of applications that today use a database, many users don't have a database or can't install one intheir servers or they have the wrong DBMS. Applications storing simple things where a database is too much can rely in this set of functions to provide a more efficient storage solution than plain binary or text files. This can be as simple as saving a set of preferences for a user, you can save it in a text file or a binary file but it is easier and more efficient to use a key-value enabled file format and then retrieve the preferences for the user. I can imagine a zillion more examples where such a feature can be a very good idea. If someone finds this idea right it would be logical to start a discussion about which DBM format should be bundled and how. Regards, Garland. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.368 / Virus Database: 204 - Release Date: 5/31/02