For many years, the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) formed the open source foundation for lots of web applications. To access MySQL databases from PHP applications, the etx/mysql extension serves as the most popular API.

In the latest releases, both MySQL 4.1 and PHP5 provide new technologies to make it easier and more performant to write applications. PHP 5 improved its object orientation and MySQL 4.1 offers a more efficient network protocol.

The new PHP extension ext/mysqli (mysql improved) makes use of those new features. It is now possible to write PHP code that access MySQL databases in an object-oriented way. This makes the code more readable and understandable. Also, error handling is more convenient with ext/mysqli.

The session will give a brief overview of the old ext/mysql extension and then introduce the new ext/mysqli extension. All features will be presented by code examples. At the end, help and advice will be provided for migrating existing PHP code from using ext/mysql to ext/mysqli.