On CodePoets.co.uk today, a new tutorial introduces you to the PEAR DB package, giving you a howto guide on performing simple queries with its functionality.
PEAR::DB, provides a uniform, cross platform, cross database method for connecting to databases, when writing PHP applications/scripts. Extensive documentation can be found online here This article aims to show briefly, how queries and updates can be performed when using PEAR DB.
They list a few reasons why one might want to use the PEAR DB package over the normal PHP database functions before they get into the examples. There are four examples - making the connection, querying the database, what to do to avoid SQL injections, and updating your database with prepared statements.