PEAR DB used as a standard

hi guys i am currently creating standards in my workplace , they are using php3 which i have started to intergrate phplib dba for starters as a standard for php3 , i have created custom error handling and works fine , it is very similar to the PEAR DB and i would like to use PEAR DB as the standard in PHP4 , i have asked this question before in a thread but i would like to know apart from using it for the intranet sites , has there been a change in the code to make it work faster without so much overhead ? the websites some in particular get more traffic than some, i dont want to intergrate it if the compilation is going to take too long and slow down the sites, but i also donnot like to use the native functions and have it bare bones without the nice error handling features and debugging , i have develop custom error handling whih catches errrors and displays user friendly error pages , plus debugging pages , and pear db is my choice of dba , let me know soon thanks.