Chapter 12. PHP and Data Access

In the three previous chapters, we covered data access in a broad fashion by spending some time learning about database management systems, databases, tables, and how to design and manipulate them. However, most of that discussion was framed in the context of using simple database client programs to connect to the server and test our queries.

In this chapter, we will fill in a key piece necessary for writing web applicationshow to perform database operations within our PHP scripts. Fortunately, it does not involve significant amounts of extra work, and there is excellent support for many servers.

In this chapter, we will

• Look at how connecting to a database server within PHP differs from using a client program

• See how to execute the various queries that we have seen in previous chapters

• Learn how to access the results from the various queries we execute

• Briefly consider some of the issues related to connecting to MySQL servers