title: ADOdb
text: # ADOdb
  
  ADOdb is a database abstraction library for PHP, originally based on the same concept as Microsoft's ActiveX Data Objects. It allows developers to write applications in a consistent way regardless of the underlying database system storing the information. The advantage is that the database system can be changed without re-writing every call to it in the application.
  
  ## Features
  
  ADOdb supports the following databases:
  
  * Firebird
  * IBM Db2
  * Interbase
  * Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
  * Microsoft Access
  * Microsoft SQL Server
  * MySQL
  * Oracle database
  * PHP Data Objects (PDO)
  * PostgreSQL
  * SQLite
  * generic ODBC
  * MariaDB
  
  Legacy, unsupported or obsolete drivers may still be found in older releases of ADOdb.
  
  In addition to the Database Abstraction Layer, ADOdb includes the following features:
  
  * Schema management tools: a suite of tools to interrogate the attributes of tables, fields and indexes in databases as well as providing cross-database schema management including a full suite of XML based functions
  * Date and time library: provides a drop-in replacement for PHP date functions, but provide access to dates outside the normal range of dates supported by normal PHP functions
  * Session management tools: allows storing session data in a database table or as encrypted data
  