Jeremy Zawodny has shared his opinion on database abstraction layers in PHP applications - they need to die.

Beware of men preaching of false hope. Take, for example, the way some folks feel like they need a database abstraction layer in their applications. [...] So why do folks do it? Because PHP is also a programming language and they feel the need to "dumb it down" or insulate themselves (or others) from the "complexity" of PHP.

He goes on to say that, despite the claims that people make about portability ("it's never that easy") and ease of use, the only real answer is to strip out this layer and use good programming practices to take the database access code out into a separate library that can be replaced quickly and easily.