Re: Re: PHP vs. ASP

> 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. :) Every abstraction layer is by definition a wrapper. I am sure everyone by now has heard my opinion on db abstraction layers though. As far as I am concerned they are pointless. It is the wrong place to do things. The right way to do database abstraction is at the functional layer. ie. write a function that implements a certain database action your application needs. get_user_record(), for example. Then write this function for each database your application needs to support. Anything short of this and you end up with a nearly useless system that is only capable of using generic or lowest-common-denominator SQL statements. For really simple applications that is ok, I guess, but for anything substantial you are going to have to use DB-specific SQL to take advantage of each database properly. See Oracle's DECODE() statement for a blatant example of this. -Rasmus