The PDO_MYSQLND alpha is available!

[Johannes Schlüter]

Dear MySQL and PHP users,

the alpha version of PDO_MYSQLND for PHP has been released. 
PDO_MYSQLND is a new driver for PDO (PHP Data Objects) which can be used
to connect to the MySQL Server 4.1 and newer. PDO is a data-access
abstraction layer for PHP.

You can download PDO_MYSQLND from the MySQL Forge download page at

   http://downloads.mysql.com/forge/pdo_mysqlnd_preview

The new PDO_MYSQLND driver is a drop-in replacement for the PDO_MYSQL 
driver. PDO_MYSQL is developed and maintained by the community.

PDO_MYSQLND is based on the MySQL native driver for PHP (mysqlnd). The 
MySQL native driver for PHP is an optimized drop-in replacement for the 
MySQL client library (libmysql). The MySQL native driver for PHP has 
proven its compatibility, stability and excellent performance as an 
optional backend library of the MySQL flagship PHP Connector ext/mysqli.

PDO_MYSQLND inherits all benefits of the MySQL native driver for PHP:

* The development is licensed under the terms of the PHP license to 
prevent any license issues.

* On the C-level, mysqlnd uses many of the proven and stable PHP 
internal functions.

* The backend library (mysqlnd) of PDO_MYSQLND is contained in the PHP 
5.3 source tree. There is no longer a need to link any external 
libraries. Thus you neither need to install the MySQL client library to 
compile PDO with MySQL Support nor do you need to take care of versions.

* Compiling has been made easier.

While this alpha version of PDO_MYSQLND has been tested on different 
operating systems we suggest usage of Linux, full support for all 
platforms supported by PHP is planned for later versions. This driver 
supports PHP 5.3 only.

We do not recommend using the alpha release in production environments.
Compared to the previos preview the following things have been changed:

- PDO_MYSQLND can now return integer variables for returning for integer
  columns, float values are returned as string due to limitations in
  PDO.

- Improved test coverage and test quality.

We kindly ask users and developers to try it out and provide us with
feedback, bug reports, bug fixes, patches, etc. To discuss PDO_MYSQLND, 
please use our PHP Forum at http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?52. You may
also subscribe to the MySQL PHP mailing list which is available at 
http://lists.mysql.com/php .

More information is available on the projects wiki page at

   http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/PHP_PDO_MYSQLND
-- 
Johannes Schlüter - MySQL Engineering, Connectors and Client Connectivity

Sun Microsystems GmbH, Sonnenallee 1, 85551 Kirchheim-Heimstetten
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