Upgrade notes for 5.1

I would say something like this:

In PHP 5.0, SQLite 2 support was provided by the sqlite extension.
With the introduction of PDO, the sqlite extension now also provides a
'sqlite2' driver for PDO; this means that the sqlite extension depends
upon the PDO extension.

PHP 5.1 ships with a number of alternative interfaces to sqlite:
ext/sqlite provides the "classic" sqlite procedural and OO API that
you've used in prior versions of PHP. It also provides the 'sqlite2'
PDO driver to allow you to access sqlite databases created with
earlier versions of PHP.
ext/pdo_sqlite provides the 'sqlite' version 3 driver. SQLite version
3 is vastly superior to SQLite version 2, but the file formats of the
two versions are not compatible.

Which should you use?
If your project is already written and working against PHP 5.0, then
you can continue to use ext/sqlite without problems.
New projects should use PDO and the 'sqlite' (version 3) driver, as
this is faster than SQLite 2 and supports prepared statements and
binary columns natively.
The 'sqlite2' driver for PDO is provided as a convenience for
accessing legacy SQLite 2 databases, created either by older versions
of PHP, or by external processes that can only generate SQLite 2
databases.

I'd also suggest that all the PDO extensions be built shared to
facilitate easier upgrades via PECL as new features are developed
there, but that's just me.

--Wez.

Draft 1:

In PHP 5.0, SQLite 2 support was built-in. Due to the advent of SQLite 3
and PHP Data Objects, the SQLite engine is no longer statically built into
PHP by default. The PDO_SQLITE driver communicates with the SQLite 3 engine,
and the sqlite extension remains in place only for reasons of back
compatibility.
Note that the sqlite extension is now reliant on PDO under win32. The
intention
is to allow support for legacy SQLite 2 code alongside newly written SQLite
3
code; the PDO, sqlite and PDO_SQLITE extensions should all be enabled.

Somewhere between Draft 1 and Draft 2, I picked up the info that you can
write SQLite 2 code for PDO via DSN = sqlite2. I've no idea why anyone
would want to do that, but it's there...

----- Original Message -----
From: "Wez Furlong" kingwez@gmail.com
To: "Steph Fox" steph@zend.com
Cc: "internals" internals@lists.php.net
Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 4:52 PM
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Upgrade notes for 5.1

I wouldn't "strongly" recommend the use of PDO when upgrading; that's
sending the wrong message. I'd "warmly" recommend that the use of PDO
be considered for new projects.

The sqlite information is wrong. This is the way it is:

ext/sqlite bundles sqlite version 2. The extension provides the "good
old" ext/sqlite API and also implements the 'sqlite2' driver for PDO.
If you need to access SQLite version 2 databases, you need this
extension. Use of sqlite version 2 should be avoided in new projects,
as sqlite version 3 is vastly superior.

ext/pdo_sqlite bundles sqlite version 3. It provides the 'sqlite' PDO
driver. It's use is recommended for all new projects that want to use
SQLite.

--Wez.

Hi all,

I've already canvassed Ilia and Stas - can anyone else think of anything
I've missed/mis-explained here?

Thanks guys/guyess,

• Steph