Database planning is one of the things that seems poorly taught these days. I mean, sure, there's classes and seminars that you can go to to learn about them, but how many of you out there ever had someone sit you down and show you the "right way" to think about table structure. For those of you who are just starting out with PHP and MySQL (as I once was), it's common to just jump right in and start building your MySQL tables with PHPMyAdmin and not make any considerations for future database growth or needs... isn't it? We've all done it, and we all know we shouldn't, but it's quick and easy.

Well, the latest article from DevArticles.com this morning, talks about a PHP classes that can help you work with your database, making the adjustments that you might need as you go instead of trashing the tables all and starting over. It basically makes your life simpler by keeping a record of what fields are in the database, then looking at the information you submit to see what it needs to update.

It's a pretty cool little script, but it's definitely not for your newbie developers out there. I could see this thing doing some pretty good damage if someone didn't know what to change to make it work on their system...