In a note from PHP Magazine this morning, there is a new article that just might appeal to anyone tracking the ext/mysqli interface for PHP.

In Using ext/mysqli: Part I - Overview and Prepared Statements, the authors introduce you to ext/mysqli, what it's for, what the ultimate goal of the extension is, and some of the major features that are above and beyond the normal MySQL functionality.

And, of course, to help illustrate the point, they give you some code to show the slight (but quite handy) differences between ext/mysql and ext/mysqli. They move onto something called "prepared statements" that includes the ability to use bound results statements and bound parameter statements. Prepared statements provide developers with the ability to create queries that are more secure, have better performance, and are more convenient to write. The bound queries allow you write a template, however complex, on the MySQL side and just feed it information like you would a normal function. The bound results functionality allows you to take your PHP variables and relates them to the columns themselves without having to write any complex for loops or extra-long strings to submit your variables to the database...