Over on Devshed.com today, there's a new posting that sets out to educate you in the use of the PEAR DB package and how it can help you on your site.

PEAR DB provides a consistent set of methods for using a relational database no matter what database you’re using. It supports the following PHP database extensions: FrontBase, Informix, InterBase, Microsoft SQL Server, mSQL, ODBC, MySQL, Sybase, OCI8, and PostgreSQL. A driver that supports new features in version 4 of MySQL is also in the works. This chapter covers DB version 1.4.

They start with a simple connection example (complete with code), and move into how to use DSNs, quoting and placeholders, as well as how to retrieve the information from your executed queries.

The article is an excerpt from the Apress book Essential PHP Tools...