I've been working after hours on the HotHTML 4 IDE, and it goes without
saying that even though this release is being written in .NET 2.0 its
not stopping us from still having that rich language support from the
previous release. One of the key languages I'm targetting - thats
non-MS (like ASP/ASP.NET) is ofcourse PHP. I took a trip down
memory lane when i downloaded
PHP 5.1 Beta 3 yesterday, its got some
pretty exciting stuff, some of which i'll talk about below...
Among the coolest is PDO, PHP Data Objects. Its what the PEAR DB
Modules are currently to php developers, a very abstract and portable
set of database classes which makes it easier to make the transisition
from one DB to another without breaking code. My beloved
REFOLD uses the PEAR modules
mainly because we thought in the future we could give our client the ability to move to say Oracle instead and not worry about
issues with migration.
Now that this "Framework" is tightly 'integrated' into the PHP
engine/runtime itself(?) it will mean that PHP 5.1 developers/sites
will be alot easier to manage - think of how much less code the
PHPNuke/BB guys have to write?.
Another area is speed, i feel that this release is somewhat faster that
the previous v5.x release - I know the release notes added that perf
was increased, but I tend to not notice them most of the time. Either
way if your working with PHP 5.0, then its HIGHLY RECOMMENDED you take
a look at PHP 5.1, its cutting edge, its faster and teh PDO is sooo
much easier to work with:-)
Take a look at this
WIKI on the basics of PDO, if you dont fall in love, then... (fill insult)