In this new post on Davey Shafik's blog today, he takes a look at one of the newer portions of PHP - the service data object extension.

To say the least, SDO looked interesting, with the ability to access data from a Database (via PDO) and data in XML files (and potentionally any other format) from a single API is appealing.

The ability to mingle all these forms of data and access them as one, well, I just like it. It appeals to my inner geek. However, from my brief look at SDO, I've been sorely dissapointed.

He mentions the lack of identical APIs between SDO and PDO, and the fact that you have to define the data structure before you can use it.

Be sure to check out the comments for a good little look at why SDO is set up like it is from one of the @php.net-ers...