Universal database connection in PHP

Question

Is there some way of building a PHP application that can either connect to a MySQL or Oracle DB without having to change DB connection and query functions if the database changes to/from MySQL/Oracle?

My initial thoughts are 'no'. Surely a PHP DB connection needs to be different for different DB types. However, there might be some function haven't heard about that attempts to connect to a DB in different ways.

Any thoughts would be great. I have a PHP application that connects to a MySQL database on my machine but due to company policy, they only offer Oracle DBs so I'm going to have to change things.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Yes. It's called a Database Abstraction Layer. Have a look at PDO, it comes bundled with PHP.

Answer 2

Use PDO. You need to ensure that your queries work in both database systems though.