[PHP-DEV] Re: [PHP4BETA] Re: Couldn't find your reference From: Eli Marmor (marmor <email protected>)
Date: 11/18/99

>From Chad's message it may look for some people that he quoted me.
I just wanted to note that this quotation ("Bingo" etc.) is of
Slashdot, not of me, as well as other things from Slashdot that I
quoted after I was asked (personally) by some readers who couldn't
find these references.

Chad wrote:

> > Bingo. This (database interface dependency) IMO is the biggest problem
> > that needs to be solved with PHP. It supports a wide variety of
> > databases with APIs that are very similar in function, but they're all
> > different. We do a lot of work with MySQL and Oracle around here, and
> > with Perl/DBI you can often go from one to the other with no changes at
> > all (except the connection string). It couldn't possibly be easier.
>
> Just to comment, I felt this comment was a bit much. Database
> Abstraction is a good options to have, but I think the biggest problem
> with DBI is that it's ALL you have. Sure you can call functions, but
> then your code is no longer portable. In a case like that I think it's
> better to not abstract the API, but to abstract the database
> interactivity itself by having your app call generic routines like
> getData and then have a plug in script/module that can get the data
> however it wishes from the database. This is the only way to truly allow
> your app to work cross database. However, in many cases a simple
> abstraction of the API is enough, but I'm not convinced this is
> something that would be that advantageous to put in php as opposed to
> just doing an abstraction in php (such as phplib and phpDB do).
> Performance might be a bit better with it native, but with php4, is it
> really going to matter? I think it should be more like what perl does,
> where it's not a part of the core language, but rather another module
> that can be downloaded. But perl has a bit more advanced idea of
> packages, so that might be something that needs to be addressed. 

-- 
Eli Marmor

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