Classes to access database

Tom_Tees

Hello, I am new to OOP - but not programming - and trying to get up to speed quickly. (I read some object-orieted programming books several months ago, but just got lost in the theory.)

It seems that in addition to classes representing physical, real-world things, advanced developers abstract things like access data in the database, and talking to different logical layers like in MVC.

Can someone help me understand...

1.) What is a database accessor class?

2.) What does it look like?

3.) Why would I want to use one?

I am trying to avoid just taking my procedural code and wrapping it in one or two classes since that seems to defeat the point of using OOP.

Unfortunately I'm not sure how to "abstract" things into classes.

TomTees

mrbaseball34

If you search PHPClasses.org for ADODB, you will find many classes that show how to encapsulate data access. These classes, however, deal mainly with Microsoft databases, such a Access and SQL Server. But it will give you an idea on how to do it.

There are other classes there that encapsulate the mySQL access, as well.

Tom_Tees

mrbaseball34;10953702 wrote:
If you search PHPClasses.org for ADODB, you will find many classes that show how to encapsulate data access. These classes, however, deal mainly with Microsoft databases, such a Access and SQL Server. But it will give you an idea on how to do it.

There are other classes there that encapsulate the mySQL access, as well.

Are there examples online?

It is a pain to have to download files and it is also saying I have to be a registered user.

TomTees

mrbaseball34

It is free to register and most of them have examples.

mrbaseball34

What are the language(s) you previously programmed in, Tom?

Tom_Tees

mrbaseball34;10953705 wrote:
It is free to register and most of them have examples.

Sorry, didn't mean to sound ungrateful, I just try to minimize my web presence.

If you think that is a REALLY good website that I'll use A LOT, then maybe it does make sense to register.

TomTees

Tom_Tees

mrbaseball34;10953706 wrote:
What are the language(s) you previously programmed in, Tom?

A little bit of everything.

In college it was mainframe stuff like Assembler, Pascal, COBOL.

Most of my former lifetime was spent designing and building database apps using MS Access, VBA, and VB.

I have tinkered with Java and did database things like Oracle's PL/SQL.

Have been teaching/re-teaching myself HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL and so on in the past year.

I feel comfortable with programming logic and with procedural programming, but was just the wrong age in the wrong place to get all of the OOP exposure I have always wanted.

It is my hope that I can finally pick that up while doing PHP.

TomTees

mrbaseball34

Well, I wouldn't consider Access a database app. <bg>

Anyway. that site helped me to learn PHP because it offers different ways of doing things.
You can download a few classes and determine which is best for your own use.

mrbaseball34

I did Delphi for 15+ years and since the Delphi jobs dried up where I live, I've had to go back to PHP. I learned it back in '99 when I was designing, programming and administering a website for a local baseball league.

Tom_Tees

mrbaseball34;10953732 wrote:
Well, I wouldn't consider Access a database app. <bg>

Anyway. that site helped me to learn PHP because it offers different ways of doing things.
You can download a few classes and determine which is best for your own use.

I never claimed to be a database expert, but that was my background mainly.

(I have experience with Oracle - which certainly is a "real" database - but not as a job.)

TomTees