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MySQL Functions in PHP5 - PHP
PHP 5’s official release occurred on July 13th with a complete re-haul of object-oriented programming features and improved MySQL functions. These are sure to be great additions to the package for PHP developers. However, many of the changes to PHP are hinting to something that may not necessarily be something PHP developers will like down the road.
Keeping pace with the developments in MySQL and PHP’s tight relationship, PHP5 has added a new suite of MySQL functions relating to the new features added since MySQL 4.1. Denoted as Improved MySQL Extension, its purpose is to allow developers to take advantage of prepared statements and the other additions to MySQL 4.1 and above. Find out the details of these at: http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.mysqli.php.
Something very interesting to note with the addition on the Improved MySQL Extension is the absence of bundled MySQL client libraries with PHP5. There are numerous reasons given for this, including the different licenses that PHP and MySQL are under (PHP is under a BSD/Apache type license and MySQL is under a GPL license). The PHP5 documentation also assures developers that ‘there will always be MySQL support in PHP of one kind or another’ but doesn’t go into details as to the future of MySQL support. This perhaps is further evidence that the long-lasting popularity of LAMP environments (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) will soon be replaced by SLOP environments (Sun, Linux, Oracle, PHP). If Zend continues to shy away from MySQL and completely joins forces with Sun, MySQL may soon no longer be part of the picture, and cheap, fast development may no longer be possible for PHP developers in the same capacity as it is today.
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