DevShed has started up a new series looking at one of the more popular software design patterns - the Active Record pattern. In this first part of the series they introduce the pattern and include a little code to get things started.

Using the active record pattern to develop a database-driven application offers many advantages. It can save PHP developers a wealth of time in coding and code maintenance, because you can take advantage of SQL abstraction.

First they set up a simple data mapping class (using methods like setFirstName to change the "firstname" property of the object) then a MySQL abstraction class and, in the last page of this first part, he combines the two to make a simple Active Record example.