Introduction

The dbx module is a database abstraction layer (db 'X', where 'X' is a supported database). The dbx functions allow you to access all supported databases using a single calling convention. The dbx-functions themselves do not interface directly to the databases, but interface to the modules that are used to support these databases.

Requirements

To be able to use a database with the dbx-module, the module must be either linked or loaded into PHP, and the database module must be supported by the dbx-module. Currently, the following databases are supported, but others will follow:

• FrontBase (available from PHP 4.1.0).

• Microsoft SQL Server

• MySQL

• ODBC

• PostgreSQL

• Sybase-CT (available from PHP 4.2.0).

• Oracle (oci8) (available from PHP 4.3.0).

• SQLite (PHP 5).

Documentation for adding additional database support to dbx can be found at http://www.guidance.nl/php/dbx/doc/.

Installation

In order to have these functions available, you must compile PHP with dbx support by using the --enable-dbx option and all options for the databases that will be used, e.g. for MySQL you must also specify --with-mysql=[DIR]. To get other supported databases to work with the dbx-module refer to their specific documentation.

Runtime Configuration

The behaviour of these functions is affected by settings in php.ini.

Here's a short explanation of the configuration directives.

Resource Types

There are two resource types used in the dbx module. The first one is the link-object for a database connection, the second a result-object which holds the result of a query.

Predefined Constants

The constants below are defined by this extension, and will only be available when the extension has either been compiled into PHP or dynamically loaded at runtime.