Time for testing the final PHP 5.2 release
Don't worry - that's final 5.2, not final 5 and, anyway, it's only PHP 4 that is being phased out.
What is happening with PHP 5 is that some bigger enhancements will be merged into a planned PHP 5.3 release. This means the release candidates of PHP 5.2.4 - the final 5.2 patch - need solid testing before being finalized, as you could be using it for a while.
Even if you are still using PHP 4, or PHP 5.1, any testing you do on 5.2.4 right now will benefit you when you get around to upgrading.
PHP 5.2.4 includes OCI8 (and PDO_OCI) of course, as the code base is picked up from PHP's CVS system. Antony is also ready to take a snapshot of OCI8 from CVS for a new PECL OCI8 bundle. So by testing OCI8 in PHP 5.2.4 you are testing what will be in the PECL OCI8 1.2.4 bundle. We've had a few PHP 5 releases since PECL OCI8 1.2.3 was built at the end of Janurary 2007, and various bug fixes have been merged to CVS during that time. Here is the current list of changes that will be in PECL OCI8 1.2.4:
- Fixed PECL bug #10194 (crash in Oracle client when memory limit reached in the callback).
- Fixed bug #42173 (oci_field_type fixes for INTERVAL and TIMESTAMP types).
- Fixed bug #42134 (oci_error() returns false after oci_new_collection() fails).
- Fixed bug #41917 (oci_field_precision and oci_field_scale datatypes fixed).
- Fixed bug #41711 (Null temporary lobs not supported).
- Fixed bug #41594 (Statement cache is flushed too frequently).
- Fixed bug #40415 (oci_fetch_all and nested cursors, allocate descriptors dynamically)
- Fixed segfault on rebinding and re-executing a statement with LOBs.
- Fixed compile failure in ZTS mode when collections support is missing.
- Allowed statement cache size to be set for non-persistent connections.
- Improved oci_password_change() to close persistent connections on shutdown (to update hashed connection details).
- Changed oci_pconnect() to behave like oci_connect() when SYSDBA and SYSOPER privileges are used.
- Various minor improvements
