On Dzone.com Leigh Shevick continues her series looking at some of the "unknown databases" out there that PHP developers might not be aware of (but could be very useful in their applications). In this second part of the series, she looks at GladiusDB and Firebird.

In this next installment, we’ll be looking at two (arguably very contrasting) databases. The first is Gladius DB, which is a flat file database written in pure PHP. The second is Firebird, another database veteran, which has features similar to some of the better-known databases, such as Microsoft SQLServer.

She gives a brief introduction of each and includes links to two resources to help you get connected to each. A bit of sample code shows how to make the connections and pull information out of simple tables (SELECTed).