Many times, people ask for feature by feature
comparisons between software products such as packages and
libraries. The comparisons found in this chapter are meant to answer
these questions. They are taken directly from the ADOdb
documentation without any comments or changes. The impression is
that PEAR DB is easier to use, yet ADOdb is more feature rich. Both
libraries are still in development and will present the best they
can offer.
|
Feature |
PEAR DB 1.6 |
ADOdb 4.52 |
|
General Style |
Simple, easy to use. Lacks Oracle specific
functionality. |
Has multi-tier design. Simple high-level
design for beginners, and also lower-level advanced Oracle
functionality. |
|
Support for Prepare |
Yes, but only on one statement, as the last
prepare overwrites previous prepares. |
Yes (multiple simultaneous prepare's allowed) |
|
Support for LOBs |
No |
Yes, using update semantics |
|
Support for REF Cursors |
No |
Yes |
|
Support for IN Parameters |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Support for OUT Parameters |
No |
Yes |
|
Schema creation using XML |
No |
Yes, including ability to define tablespaces
and constraints |
|
Provides database portability features |
No |
Yes, has some ability to abstract features that
differ between databases such as dates, bind parameters, and data
types. |
|
Performance monitoring and tracing |
No |
Yes. SQL can be traced and linked to web page
it was executed on. Explain plan support included. |
|
Recordset caching for frequently used queries |
No |
Yes. Provides great speedups for SQL
involving complex where, group-by and order-by
clauses. |
|
Popularity |
Yes, part of PEAR release |
Yes, many open source projects are using this
software, including PostNuke, Xaraya, Mambo, Tiki Wiki. |
|
Speed |
Medium speed. |
Very high speed. Fastest database abstraction
library available for PHP. |
|
High Speed Extension available |
No |
Yes. You can install the ADOdb extension,
which implements the most frequently used parts of ADOdb as fast C
code. |
