ADOdb is a database abstraction library for PHP, originally based on the same concept as Microsoft's ActiveX Data Objects. It allows developers to write applications in a consistent way regardless of the underlying database system storing the information. The advantage is that the database system can be changed without re-writing every call to it in the application.

Features

ADOdb supports the following databases:

  • Firebird
  • IBM Db2
  • Interbase
  • Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
  • Microsoft Access
  • Microsoft SQL Server
  • MySQL
  • Oracle database
  • PHP Data Objects (PDO)
  • PostgreSQL
  • SQLite
  • generic ODBC
  • MariaDB

Legacy, unsupported or obsolete drivers may still be found in older releases of ADOdb.

In addition to the Database Abstraction Layer, ADOdb includes the following features:

  • Schema management tools: a suite of tools to interrogate the attributes of tables, fields and indexes in databases as well as providing cross-database schema management including a full suite of XML based functions
  • Date and time library: provides a drop-in replacement for PHP date functions, but provide access to dates outside the normal range of dates supported by normal PHP functions
  • Session management tools: allows storing session data in a database table or as encrypted data

References

  • SourceForge project page