PDO 2008
I've been calling 2008 "The Year of PDO". The reason for this has just been made public in http://news.php.net/php.pdo/1.
PDO ("PHP Data Objects") has been gaining popularity but it needs a good nudge to stabilize it, make it consistent, and make it the first-choice data access layer for PHP. The PDO API is diverging between databases, there are bugs, the testing is weak, and there are very, very few people actually committing fixes.
I'd love to see PDO mature. We know from experience with other data access standards (e.g. JDBC) that there is a benefit to a common API. For PHP, a new version of PDO built on the foundation of the current implementation is this way forward.
The database organizations are ready and willing to help create such a standard and to contribute development and testing efforts. However there are serious business risks for the organizations in giving away and sharing intellectual property. Hence the need for a Contributer License Agreement. CLA's are used in many, many open source projects, but not for development of the PHP language itself. Using them for PDO would be something new and this is a major discussion point for the PHP community.
As a user of PHP, your exercise for today is to read the FAQ, read the CLA, decide how you want to see PHP move forward, and then make your decision known on the "pdo" mail list. You can subscribe by emailing pdo-subscribe@lists.php.net (or read it online at http://news.php.net/php.pdo). The PDO proposal is now with you, the PHP community, and you will make a decision about the benefits of having a consistent, more portable, usable, maintained data access layer in PHP.
