From:	Lukas Kahwe Smith	Date:	Thu Feb 28 12:32:21 2008
Subject:	PDO2 or PDO

Hello,

First up, I have been quite outspoken against CLA'ed code in PECL in  
the past. With the current proposal I am willing to reconsider this  
position. The main difference to me is that is that I expect the  
different vendors to take a much more active role in the development.  
This means that we can expect them to fix any issues that need quick  
attending (like a ZE change) to not break the build etc. Also we are  
getting much more. If things do not work out for us, we can always  
fork and work off of a hopefully solid base. I think we have enough to  
gain to give it a try.

So one thing that I am not clear about is why we are talking about  
PDO2. There are two arguments I have heard in this context:
1) none of the drivers are really compatible in the sense that they  
are all full of needless differences
2) the pdo callback mechanism is not ideal for all rdbms

So number one does not really make PDO2 necessary. We could just  
define a common standard now and add a "compatibility mode". This way  
it would mean that current users could much easier get the benefits of  
a common standard behavior without breaking too much code that depends  
on the old behavior.

For number two it would take a few guys to poke all the different  
peoples inside the connector development groups of the database we are  
supporting to learn how to best build a callback mechanism that plays  
well with all databases. Now this seems like quite a bit of work and  
as long as we do not have someone lining up to take that job it does  
not seem feasible to wait for PDO2. I presume that the intent of the  
original proposal was that because of the CLA the developers of DB2,  
Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL etc. could be allocated to this task. Maybe  
Zend also planned to allocate someone? Now that we do not have a CLA  
on core and spec, it seems like this plan will not pan out.

So until someone steps up, we should stick to work on PDO v1. This  
means continuing the work that Wez did on specing out PDO v1, adding  
documentation and tests (is this something where Oracle, IBM, MySQL AB/ 
Sun and Microsoft can help out?) etc. With the tests we implicitly  
also define a common standard behavior. Furthermore we can work on  
expanding the API for fetching meta data and other things. In the end  
it means to me like all the vendors have enough to get started right  
now and the community also has its work mapped out (though if someone  
is willing to pick it up is another story). If some of the vendors are  
motivated to jump start this process by hiring someone out of the  
community is of course an option for them to consider.

regards,
Lukas