If you want to port your existing application from Metabase to MDB you will have to change all of your function calls. Looking at the Metabase wrapper it will become quite obvious what changes need to be made. If you know regular expressions well you might even be able to get most of the work done with a few such replacements. Anyways, you should be up and running your old beloved advanced abstraction features but now using MDB in no time. What you will probably notice is that the method names are much shorter now. If you do some benchmarking you will also see a nice performance increase.
如果你想要把你已经存在的程序从 Metabase 移植到 MDB 你将必须改动所有的函数调用。查看 Metabase wrapper 需要改动什么将变得非常明显。如果你知道正则表达式你可能能够完成大部分这样的替换工作。无论如何，你应当向前并且运行你原来喜爱的高级抽象特性但是现在用的是 MDB。你可能注意得到的是函数名变得更加简短了。如果你作一些性能测试，你也将看到可观的性能改善。
So what does the future look like for MDB?
那么 MDB 将来会是什么样子呢？
At the time this article publishes MDB will have moved on from the original 1.0 release. Next to the original MySQL and PostGreSQL drivers MDB will also have an ODBC driver and possibly even more drivers. This is one key area that is focused on during the development of MDB. Once MDB has caught up with PEAR DB in terms of drivers it is likely to become the standard database abstraction layer in the PEAR framework.
本文发表时 MDB 可能已经不再是原来的 1.0 release 了。在原来的 MySQL 和 PostGreSQL 驱动之后，MDB还将有一个 ODBC 驱动以及可能的更多的驱动。这是 MDB 开发过程中关注的关键区域之一。一旦 MDB 在驱动方面跟上了 PEAR DB，它很有可能成为 PEAR 框架中标准的数据库抽象层。
But there is another key area of development: the MDB_frontend project. The MDB_frontend will be a phpMyAdmin like webfrontend based on MDB and the MDB manager. With this tool you will be able to browse databases stored on any RDBMS that MDB supports. The MDB_frontend will show both the native and the MDB data types. Emulated features such as sequences in MySQL will be hidden. The user will simply see a list of sequences and not a table storing the value of the sequence which is how sequences are emulated in MySQL. Furthermore the MDB_frontend will assist in porting existing databases to match the native data types that MDB expects to be used. It will also help in creating and updating XML schema files. Some initial work has been completed but much more work is needed before a public release can be expected.
但是还有另外一个开发中的关键领域：MDB_frontend 工程。MDB_frontend将成为基于 MDB 和 MDB 管理器的 phpMyadmin。有了这个工具，你将能够浏览储存在 MDB 支持的 RDBMS 中的数据库。MDB_frontend 将同时显示原生和 MDB 数据类型。模拟的特性比如 MySQL 中的序列将被隐藏。用户将仅仅看到一个序列列表而不是一个储存序列指的表，而在 MySQL 中这就是序列是如何被模拟的。而且 MDB_frontend 将帮助移植已经存在的数据库来符合 MDB 预期使用的原生数据类型。它还将帮助创建和更新 XML schema 文件。一些初期的工作已经完成了但是很多工作需要在公开发布之前被添加。
While drivers and the MDB_frontend are the focus of all development currently, there are other things that MDB users may need: Like the integration of bulk fetching of LOB fields, others may need foreign and primary key support. As always in opensource things will go faster if you participate in testing and implementation. But I am also thankful for any other feedback like feature requests.
驱动和 MDB_frontend 是当前开发的所有焦点，在 MDB 中还有许多用户可能需要的：像 bulk 获取 LOB 域的集成，其他人可能需要外部和主键支持。如一直以来的那样如果你参与测试和实现，开源的东西将加快很多。但是我也很感谢像特性需求合阳的反馈。
Some final thoughts
一些文后的思考
After months of hard work MDB is gaining acceptance among the current PEAR DB and Metabase users. I also hope that people that so far have not been convinced by other database abstraction layers realize the benefits that MDB holds for them. Of course, there are still a lot of applications that need to be tailored specifically to one RDBMS where a tool like MDB just ads unnecessary overhead and restrictions. Overall I am very pleased that we made the decision in my company to lead the MDB development. In the beginning, we were all a bit worried that by attempting to please both the PEAR DB and Metabase users the result would end up pleasing neither side. Another source of concern was if the PHP community would assist in the development or not. I am very happy that the PHP community came through and helped in writing drivers and helping on the core of MDB as well. Therefore we consider this project to be a huge success. We are sure that together MDB will be improved even further. And we are happy to have helped making PHP even better.
在数月的艰辛工作之后，MDB 正在当前的 PEAR DB 和 Metabase 用户中获得认可。我还希望当前还没有被其他数据库抽象层说服的用户意识到 MDB 给他们的好处。当然，还是有许多程序需要对 RDBMS 进行特殊剪裁，对于这种情况像 MDB 这样的工具仅仅是增加了不必要的额外负担和限制。总的来说，我非常高兴我们在我们的公司中作出领导 MDB 开发的决定。在起初，我对尝试同时取悦 PEAR DB 和 Metabase 的用户但是结果可能到处不讨好多少有些担心。另外一个关心的来源是 PHP 社区是否将帮助其开发。我非常高兴 PHP 社区来了并且帮助撰写驱动以及 MDB 的核心。因而我们认为这个项目是一个极大的成功。我们还一并相信 MDB 将得到更大的改进。而且我们对帮助 PHP 变得更好感到高兴。