Re: Re: [PHP4BETA] PHP 4.0b3 released

First of all, warning. I know enough about OSS to understand that I should really know better and refrain from posting this at all. I just couldn't help myself, so get ready for some capitalist-pig commentary. on 17.11.1999 18:15, Andi Gutmans at andi@zend.com wrote: > I personally don't think that having this abstraction layer in the core of > PHP is really any better than having it in PHPLIB. On the contrary, it's > probably much more extendible and easier to debug when it's not written in > pure C. I agree with Eli on this one -- I think database abstraction should be a priority in the development of future PHP versions. I'm more a marketer than a coder, though, so bear with me for a second. I see two major trends pushing PHP usage forward at the moment: - Increasing number of Application Service Providers (ASPs) supporting PHP. This effectively means that PHP has gained entrance to a pre-selected group of software products that hosting customers can select their platform from. This used to be the exclusive domain of Perl/CGI and Microsoft-based solutions - The increasing availability of ready-made, off-the-shelf PHP-based solutions. These range from complete web based collaboration environments to logistics systems -- great stuff, if you ask me. I think the combination of these two -- end users being able to utilize hosted, ready-made PHP software -- is the holy grail that could single-handedly cause a ten-fold increase in PHP usage. The role of the PHP Group here is, of course, to define the lowest common denominator that is the de-facto PHP platform. And, for more reasons than one, I feel that uniform database access should be a part of that platform. Marko PS, I'm willing to arrange resources for the completition of such a project. -- markonen@php.net -- http://magenta.net/marko/