If you are writing an application that is used in multiple environments and operating systems, you need to plan to support multiple databases. This article is based on my experiences with multiple database systems, stretching from 4th Dimension in my Mac days, to the databases I currently use, which are: Oracle, FoxPro, Access, MS SQL Server and MySQL. Although most of the advice here applies to Perl, Python and other programming languages, we will focus on PHP and how the ADOdb database abstraction library offers some solutions.

A quick tutorial explaining how to alternate table row colors using PHP and MySQL.

After reading this tutorial, you should be able to add previous and next links to your pages that display data from a database.

Ever wondered how the big sites can change their content so quickly Inside we'll show you how, using databases and dynamic content. The basics of MySQL are explored and a simple address book is created.

Even though loading data from a text file into the database is not a task that user would perform on a daily basis, there are several cases when the speed of this process is important to DBA and company management. One example would be having a "database guy" receive the daily reports from the field offices or sales people on daily basis. Reports come as Excel documents or delimited spreadsheets of some kind, and DBA's responsibility includes updating the database on constant basis, so that by the end of the day, he is able to give the management a report on the amount of daily sales or field office transactions. Here you will find a MS Word-format downloadable file that examines the benchmark results for Oracle and MySQL speed of loading the data from a text file.

This is a quick MySQL reference for your daily practice or for learning MySQL. This one page document includes most of the commands you will need to create databases and tables, run queries and process data. The download file format in MS Word.

This article will briefly describe how to compile PHP with ORACLE 8i support. The author writes "when i try to compile php with oracle support on Solaris 2.6 i got lots of problems. after tedious search in internet i have found solution. I have following configuration: ORACLE 8.1.6; PHP 4.0.6; Apache 1.3.19 (Already Installed)."

This free, dW-exclusive tutorial shows you how to use two open source, cross-platform tools for creating a dynamic Web site: PHP and MySQL. When we are finished, you will learn how dynamic sites work and how they serve the content, and you will be ready to serve your own dynamic content from your site. After a quick registration, you can begin the tutorial. The tutorial should take you about 1 hour to complete. You can take it online, or download a PDF or zip file of the tutorial.

This is a short tutorial on how to program in PHP and MySQL. Covers several MySQL functions via telnet command, and a short example on using PHP with MySQL.

The author writes "mySQL comes with a pretty powerful security system, the grant tables, which allows database administrators to precisely control access to databases, tables and even specific rows and columns." This article describes how the five grant tables combine to offer power users a tremedous amounts of flexibility and control over database access and operations.

This is a MySQL CHM (Compiled HTML Manual), based on original html-vsersion of manual from www.mysql.com.

This is a detailed tutorial intended for the PHP programmer interested in learning more about database connectivity - using the ODBC standard. You should be familiar with PHP syntax and have a working knowledge of databases.

PEAR's DB classes are one of the database abstraction layers. This article takes a look at some traditional database access methods and then compare them with the method employed by PEAR.

This is a nice tutorial on how to use PostgreSQL and PHP together. Topics covered include: Installation of PostgreSQL, PHP, and Apache, A Brief Introduction and Basic Commands, Different Types of Data, Retrieving Data from a Database, Inserting Data into a Database, Updating Data in a Database, Deleting Data from a Database, Dealing with Errors, and Including Files. The tutorial is also available for download.

This article addresses two SQL-related issues in PHP: 1) Creating complex, powerful, queries to take advantage of your table schemas, and 2) Building those queries on the fly according to user input.

This tutorial explains the need for database abstraction in PHP, and shows how to create your own database API that can be to used with different types of databases. The tutorial uses a PHP PostgreSQL API as an example.

In this Part 2 of the article "Building Next/Prev Buttons for Query Results," you will be shown a sample code designed to work in most instances (with minor changes).

PHP4 is packed with good features. One of the most popular is session variables. These are variables that persist throughout a session, as the user moves from page to page. Session variables are great holders of state information and other useful stuff. PHP4's session variables are stored in files by default. However for true scalability, it is better to store this data in a database using a database wrapper library like ADODB. ADODB supports Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Interbase, MSSQL, VFP, Access, ADO.

This article describes how to make Access and PHP work together using the ODBCSocketServer, an open source socket server, available at http://odbc.linuxave.net/. This tutorial will take you through configuring your machines and using the socket server.

The author notes, "Last week we introduced you to the basics of creating an efficient database table structure. After today's concluding article of this series you'll be able to create some of your own MySQL-powered applications, or use this syntax as the basis for learning to create normalized databases on your database server of choice."