On his blog today Brian Moon takes a look at the mysqlnd driver that comes with PHP 5.3 by default and some strangeness he found when trying to fetch results.

I have spoken in the past (see my slides and interview: MySQL Tips and Tricks) about using mysql_unbuffered_query or using mysqli_query with the MYSQLI_USE_RESULT flag [...] So, my natural thought was that using MYSQLI_USE_RESULT with fetch_all would yield the most awesome performance ever. The data would not be buffered and it would get put into a PHP array in C instead of native code.

He had hoped that the fetch_all would cooperate with the MYSQL_USE_RESULT setting, but it seemed to only work with the MYSQLI_STORE_RESULT default. He even filed a bug on the matter which was marked bogus and then reopened. He hopes to show, based on test results, that the result could be much faster.

The Internet Super Hero blog has announced the release of the latest alpha version of the mysql native driver for PDO - version 1.0.2-alpha (PDO_MYSQLND):

I am glad to announce the availability of the first alpha version of PDO_MYSQLND. PDO_MYSQLND is a PHP PDO driver for MySQL based on the MySQL native driver. PDO_MYSQLND 1.0.2-alpha is available for download on http://downloads.mysql.com/forge/pdo_mysqlnd_preview.

Updates include fixes for return values, patches for memory leaks, more code coverage and some "very promising results" running on a set of dedicated testing machines.