The DBD framework in Apache provides unified bindings for SQL databases. Instead of each module (PHP, Perl, Authentication, MyCustomApp, etc.) managing its own connections, Apache manages a pool of database connections, available to whatever needs them. Even when there's only one database application, connection pooling is a major improvement in efficiency compared to maintaining one connection per process or thread, as in old-fashioned LAMP. Databases currently supported are PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, and Oracle.

This talk will introduce the DBD architecture, summarize the APIs, and explain how DBD provides major improvements over classic LAMP, particularly in scalability of applications. It will briefly introduce existing applications from simple SQL queries through HTTP authentication to Embedded XML-SQL bridging. It will point developers in the right direction for using the framework in their applications and for upgrading existing SQL applications, and will briefly explain how to add support for a new backend database.