In the efforts of providing true database ubiquity for the award-witting Joomla platform, SML has announced the creation and sponsoring of the PDO Driver project on Joomla's own JoomlaCode.

The purpose of the project is to integrate the PHP5 native database interface with the Joomla application framework. The benefit is enabling Joomla-based applications to take advantage of the performance benefits of a faster database library, as well as having the eventual ability to deploy Joomla applications on non-MySQL database platforms such as PostgreSQL.

Current Status

The initial impetus for this project was to provide prepared statement capabilities to 1.5 when it shipped. However, that can easily be provided though the existing mysqli interface, and just needs to have a slightly enhanced driver.

It is also hinted that applications can make direct use of those methods without modification to the mysqli driver class, which is being investigated.

That said, PDO implementation will take place, but most likely at a slower rate now that the most pressing needs - for us at least - are taken care of.

A separate PDO driver is going to be started within the next month, and planning is underway.