MySQL vs MySQLi Options

[Christian J]

Is there any point in learning MySQL today, or should you go straight to MySQLi?

[Brian Chandler]

Yes, it's just a new php interface to Mysql; I only skimmed, but it's a class, so gives you the advantages of OOP (object-oriented programming). But it isn't going to make any real difference to the mysql queries, and it's not likely that the conventional functions will simply disappear. If they did, there would be so many people who have large applications using those functions that someone would obviously write wrapper functions to get them back through the class interface.

And the functions all correspond anyway, so it really isn't a question of "learning" new function. (Surely you don't memorise these function details anyway? You just copy the last one, and check tricky bits in the manual.)

[Christian J]

it's not likely that the conventional functions will simply disappear.

As long as the new ones don't lack some feature of the old ones. I don't think you can mix MySQL and MySQLi functions with the same MySQLi connection (or can you?).

Can you use the old functions at all when MySQLi is enabled in php.ini? I guess I should test that myself, but in the meantime http://www.php.net/manual/en/mysqli.installation.php says

"With versions of PHP 5.3 and newer, you can alternatively use the new MySQL Native Driver with mysqli. This gives a number of benefits over using libmysql."

whatever that means (FWIW I don't have PHP5.3).

(Surely you don't memorise these function details anyway?

Some of it will always stick, so I'll probably minimize confusion by being consistent.