Hello, Richard Ellerbrock wrote: > >> I'm planning to write a database application for MySQL, and then port > >> it > > to > >> PostrgeSQL. > >> Is there any library or class that could help me to write/maintain just > > one > >> source code for both MySQL and PostgreSQL ? > > > > I think your best (if not the only) option in PHP is Metabase. > > > > http://www.phpclasses.org/metabase > > > > <snip spam> > > > > you could also use PEAR (http://pear.php.net/) which has a more than > > adequate abstraction layer for various databases. > > Another alternative (that does not require you to login before you can > download) and that promises all the functionality that Metabase does and > more is AdoDB (http://php.weblogs.com). It is also released under the LGPL which > allows you to use it in commercial applications.
I notice a few inaccuracies here. 1) ADODB still has to "run" a lot until it has all the functionality of Metabase, especially when it comes to portable database development. Just a few examples: - Schema management - Metabase is the only database abstraction package (in PHP or anything else) that lets you define a database independent schema definition of tables, fields, indexes and sequences using XML. >From them on, Metabase installs and maintains the schema for you in your database of choice. If you want to migrate a schema and any data already stored in a database installed by Metabase, it can export the schema and data in a single XML file of the same format so you can use it and re-install it in a new database without loosing information. This directly addresses a need of the original poster. This is a remarkable and unique capability of Metabase. Soon there will be even a book written by several developers about PHP and XML that has a whole chapter dedicated to Metabase and this outstanding use of XML for a very useful purpose. - Prepared queries - this is meant to execute queries that are pre-compiled. After you process a prepared query you may execute it once or more times eventually changing the values of some constant parameters in the query. Metabase prepared queries support may convert data types so the values match the underlying database data type representation format. Prepared queries in practice are the same as what John Lim calls in this document http://php.weblogs.com/portable_sql as "binding", except that he doesn't seem to be aware that it is the same thing, so he says that only some database can use it! :-) Metabase handles prepared queries with ALL supported databases. - LOB data streaming - Large OBject fields (AKA LOBs) are fields meant to store large amounts of data. ADODB has limited supported to LOBs. Either you have all data in memory or in a file. This is inadequate because if you need to insert large ammounts of data, you may simply exhaust your computer memory. Metabase has a streaming interface for LOBs. You can read or write data to LOBs in data chunks of limited size so you don't take too much memory. You can even query a table with LOB fields and update or insert in another fields pulling data directly from the selected field. Metabase implements LOB in all supported databases that have this kind of fields, which is what matters to the original poster. 2) LGPL is not a good Open Source license for commercial companies. It lets you use LGPL'd software in commercial companies without contaminating them, but if the company needs to change anything in the LGPL, you are required to publish those changes. Like RMS says, it's Free as in freedom of speech, not as in free beer! So, basically it has a cost for companies that is to have to disclose the know how and work time invested on the changes that they make. A better license for companies that sell commercial applications using Open Source software is BSD. It is better because it is not tying as LGPL. You can do anything with the code including modify and distribute (sell) it with the modifications without have contribute back your changes. Metabase uses the BSD license. Last but not least, PHP ADODB is an attempt of John Lim to develop something of his own copying ideas and names from everywhere and cash on it by selling PHPLens. He copied Microsoft ADODB to appeal better to Windows users. But since ADODB was not meant specifically for portable Web development, he still needed to copy features of Metabase like auto-incremented integer sequence values and limiting the range of rows returned in select queries result sets. Some of these things that were copied had their names changes to not look so obvious but they are still copies of Metabase features because only Metabase provided them before. Anyway, if you are thinking of using something that is just a limited copy of something, why not use Metabase, the original, and stil benefit of all the features that PHP ADO DB misses? Regards, Manuel Lemos -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
