PHP 4.2.0 Released

emmetropia writes: "PHP 4.2.0 has been released, with experimental Apache 2 support, and lots of other improvements and fixes. Check it out!"

Comments

Database Abstraction Problems

[einhverfr]

Database abstraction on the language level poses some real problems. For example:

1: PostgreSQL's result set is not forward only. This can be helpful sometimes. Most others are.

2: Interbase stores table names in upper case.

3: Timestamp formats vary per rdbms, and some other aspects of SQL syntax do as well (; or go, for example).

4: MySQL has no equivalent of roles.

I much prefer to work with a database abstraction layer which is a set of function libraries, yet still have the option of rewriting them to take advantage of the unique features of a given database. I can then wrap the behavior of the rdbms' which don't conform.

There are many OO and non-OO database abstraction schemes out there. I have even written my own which is tuned for abstraction and performance and so is procedural rather than OO. But my point is that this allows greater freedom and flexibility.