PHP PDO vs normal mysql_connect

Should I use php PDO or normal mysql_connect to execute database queries in PHP?

Which one is faster?

One of the big benefits of PDO is that the interface is consistent across multiple databases. There are some cool functions for prepared statements too, which take some of the hassle out of escaping all your query strings. The portability of PDO is greater than mysql_connect.

So, should I use PDO for those reasons or stick to the traditional mysql_connect?

Solution 1:

PDO is a bit slower than the mysql_* But it has great portability. PDO provides single interface across multiple databases. That means you can use multiple DB without using mysql_query for mysql, mssql_query for MS sql etc. Just use something like $db->query("INSERT INTO...") always. No matter what DB driver you are using.

So, for larger or portable project PDO is preferable. Even zend framework use PDO.

Solution 2:

Some quick timings indicate PDO is slightly faster at connecting.

$start = microtime(true);
for($i=0; $i<10000; ++$i) {

    try {
        $db = new PDO($dsn, $user, $password);
    } catch (PDOException $e) {
        echo 'Connection failed: ' . $e->getMessage()."\n";
    }
    $db = null;
}

$pdotime = microtime(true) - $start;
echo "PDO time: ".$pdotime."\n";

$start = microtime(true);
for($i=0; $i<10000; ++$i) {
    $db = mysql_connect($host, $user, $password);
    if(!$db) {
        echo "Connection failed\n";
    }
    if(!mysql_select_db($schema, $db)) {
        echo "Error: ".mysql_error()."\n";
    }
    mysql_close($db);
}

$rawtime = microtime(true) - $start;
echo "Raw time: ".$rawtime."\n";

Gives results like

PDO time: 0.77983117103577
Raw time: 0.8918719291687

PDO time: 0.7866849899292
Raw time: 0.8954758644104

PDO time: 0.77420806884766
Raw time: 0.90708494186401

PDO time: 0.77484893798828
Raw time: 0.90069103240967

The speed difference will be negligible anyway; establishing a network connection will likely take a LOT longer than any overhead incurred by PDO, especially if the mysql server is on another host.

You mentioned all the reasons to use PDO yourself. Really, never use the mysql_* functions directly, either use PDO, or use some other library.

Solution 3:

• With PDO you can uses binded params and that will prevent most sql injection attacks.
• You can gain more speed using PDO prepared statements.
• standard interface to all db backends
• There are a bunch of useful methods (like the fetch* family)

Solution 4:

I don't think speed is what people are looking for when they are using PDO -- I don't know if there is a difference, and I honnestly don't care : as long as I'm doing a couple of queries to a database when generating a page, a couple of milliseconds on the PHP side will not change anything.

There are two/three great things with PDO, compared to mysql_* :

• More or less constant interface accross databases ; better than using mysql_*, pg_*, oci_*, ...
• Object-Oriented API (mysqli_* has an OO-API, but not mysql_*)
• Support new features of MySQL >= 4.1 (same as mysqli_*, but not mysql_*, again)

BTW : I'm generally using PDO -- either "by hand", or as it's integrated in / used by Zend Framework and/or Doctrine.

As a sidenote : Even if you are not going to use PDO, note that using mysqli instead of mysql is recommended.

See this page of the PHP manual, about that.

Solution 5:

I did some performance testing to compare Mysqli functions to PDO functions using both prepared statements and regular direct queries (tested using select statements on Mysqlnd and MyISAM tables).

I found that PDO queries are just slightly slower than Mysqli, but only slightly. This makes sense since PDO used for this purpose mostly just a wrapper that calls Mysqli functions. The advantage to using PDO is that it makes it a little easier to migrate to a different database because the function names aren't specific to MySQL.

The real performance difference is in whether you use prepared queries. There is a large and significant performance penalty to using prepared queries. Other people who have tested them have found the same results.

The only time prepared queries are faster is if you are preparing a query once and then submitting it thousands of times with different data values. Otherwise, it's always faster to use mysqli::query() or PDO::query(). But it's important to be aware that those functions don't escape data values for you, so you need to remember to use mysqli::real_ escape_ string() or PDO::quote() on data variables.