Re: Re: PHP vs. ASP

Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:

Databases - although PHP 'supports' many databases natively, the support is in the form of 3rd party libraries with PHP wrapper functions. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but the current method dictates that to use oracle you use oci_ functions, for mysql you use mysql_ functions, etc., giving rise to the 'database portability' issue. Yes, there are db abstraction classes available in PHP, but nothing is native to the language, and that extra layer slows things down (just like ODBC can slow things down in the Windows world). Don't go throwing 'native db' support around too much without backing it up with solid argument.

Michael, see ext/dbx - the abstraction doesn't get any more native than that.

I actually was going to mention it, because I know it's being worked on - last I read it was 'beta' or something similar, and only supported a handful. My understanding was that even it was still a wrapper system, but it's definitely a welcome (huge) step in the right direction, in our estimation here. :) The site says 'experimetal' - any ideas as to what might change in the future to cause backwards compatibility problems? Or is it too early to tell yet?