PHP-Firebird help

[bigrah]

Could someone please assist me with where I can get a tutorial dealing with PHP-Firebird. I am very new in PHP.

[gizmola]

Is google broken where you are?

[Jessica]

Is google broken where you are?

That's why I like lmgtfy.com

[gizmola]

Yeah i do use that as well, but it does sort of defeat the purpose, because on one hand you're chiding them for being lazy but on the other hand you're doing the very thing for them that you wanted them to do in the first place.  When I see a poster here with one post, I can't be bothered to make that effort, because in most cases it just goes over their head. 

 

lmgtfy.com is just a brilliant idea in its simplicity and I bet the guy who did that site makes a good amount of money from something that probably took him or her no more than a day to code up.  I'm envious. 

[bigrah]

I use google but I thought asking you would help in that you could have pointed me to a better site than the rest. All the programming I know is self-taught so surely that can't mean I am lazy. I just needed assistance because of time constraints, nothing else. Don't worry as I am not offended because I think you are good people who have better things to do than to help me. And there's nothing wrong with that.

[Maq]

The manual might be a good start:

http://php.net/manual/en/book.ibase.php

[gizmola]

I use google but I thought asking you would help in that you could have pointed me to a better site than the rest. All the programming I know is self-taught so surely that can't mean I am lazy. I just needed assistance because of time constraints, nothing else. Don't worry as I am not offended because I think you are good people who have better things to do than to help me. And there's nothing wrong with that.

 

It's not like you googled first, and came back and said: i googled this, and found these sites and aI looked at them but none of them helped me because ----

 

What we do here is try and help people with specific questions.  There's nothing in it, for me to put in some google queries for you, and there's no real value to this community either.  At least, you admitted that you were basically trying to cut corners.

 

Sure, I could have done what Maq did, but really, should someone here have to make a link for you to the php manual?  It's a SQL database with a prepare and execute api.  There's not much more that needs to be said --- write some code and come back when you actually encounter a problem.

[srayner]

wow it's not very friendly here is it?

We all need help from time to time, sometimes we need the obvious pointed out to us.

 

I've been coding with php for about a year now and I still consider myself very much a beginner. I have a lot of legacy windows desktop applications that use large firebird backend databases. The world seems to be moving away from desktops and the demand is for flexible and mobile applications accessible from anywhere, ie the internet.

 

I like the concept of php because it is free and open source. It has a large community and is regularly updated. The downside for me is that the most popular database combination is mySQL. I'm not familiar with mySQL and my databases are too large to port to mySQL. I still need to support the desktop applications that use these databases. So i really want firebird support in PHP.

 

I see there are two ways to go with firebird in PHP. There is the php-interbase dll, and then there is the firebird pdo option (I'm not sure but pdo may be using php-interbase dll under the hood). I am using the Zend Framework php framework, and have therefore opted to use pdo firebird.

 

So far my php efforts have been fairly basic, but i am able to create php applications using Zend Framework that are not written for one database in particular. With just a few small changes in config file i can use either mySQL or Firebird interchangeably.

 

Other experts here with many more years of experience than me may tell you that this is not the way to go, but i would suggest looking at Zend Framework and using firebird PDO.

 

[gizmola]

wow it's not very friendly here is it?

We all need help from time to time, sometimes we need the obvious pointed out to us.

 

In my experience we're far friendlier than most community sites.  I also can't agree that people need the obvious pointed out, but I will agree that even experienced developers miss the obvious.  The difference is effort, and in this case the OP even admitted he didn't put in any effort.

 

I've been coding with php for about a year now and I still consider myself very much a beginner. I have a lot of legacy windows desktop applications that use large firebird backend databases. The world seems to be moving away from desktops and the demand is for flexible and mobile applications accessible from anywhere, ie the internet.

 

Well I think that there is still a demand for windows desktop apps, but as for database driven "enterprise" apps, for lack of a better term -- the kind of apps that might in the past have been written in a windows 4gl like powerbuilder, centura or Visual Basic, you would have a hard time convincing someone that approach makes sense these days.  Everyone wants a web ui now.

 

I like the concept of php because it is free and open source. It has a large community and is regularly updated. The downside for me is that the most popular database combination is mySQL. I'm not familiar with mySQL and my databases are too large to port to mySQL. I still need to support the desktop applications that use these databases. So i really want firebird support in PHP.

 

I see there are two ways to go with firebird in PHP. There is the php-interbase dll, and then there is the firebird pdo option (I'm not sure but pdo may be using php-interbase dll under the hood). I am using the Zend Framework php framework, and have therefore opted to use pdo firebird.

 

Yes pdo is using the interbase.dll, which is in turn using the firebird client libraries.  Pretty much every rdbms takes the same approach.  PDO is an excellent interface, and I think your plan on using ZF and its zend_db class is a smart one.

 

So far my php efforts have been fairly basic, but i am able to create php applications using Zend Framework that are not written for one database in particular. With just a few small changes in config file i can use either mySQL or Firebird interchangeably.

 

Other experts here with many more years of experience than me may tell you that this is not the way to go, but i would suggest looking at Zend Framework and using firebird PDO.

 

I think you nailed it.  In my experience people rarely port applications from one database to another.  Database portability is highly over rated, and often glosses over details in how different databases facilitate commonly helpful features.  If there's something in a database that is really helpful, not to mention highly performant, I want to use that feature, rather than some dumbed down feature with gotchas and lousy performance, all in the name of retaining database ui independence for the magical day when years of data get ported to some other database engine for reasons unknown.  With that said the use of an orm (which is basically what you're getting with zend_db and zend_db_table, albeit a relatively minimal one) is another way of getting a pretty good layer of db independence.

 

At any rate, thanks for providing your experience with Firebird and PHP.  You are definately in the minority, but clearly for good reason, and Firebird is an excellent option for people on the windows platform that doesn't seem to be considered near as much as it probably should for people with a commitment to the windows platform.