Does Zend pdo_pgsql Adapter allows you to use most benefits of PostgreSQL?

Question

Does Zend pdo_pgsql Adapter allows to use most benefits of PostgreSQL? Or there is some restrictions?

Answer 1

It depends on what you are doing. Usually PDO support almost all supported features - and some features (like prepared statements) are used simply than in original (native) interface. What I can see, a PDO is used well in applications. One important feature, that is not supported (what I know), is COPY API - special interface for bulk load.

Answer 2

Not really, but then, no interface does.

PostgreSQL has an extremely rich type library. You can have fields which are arrays or key-value dictionaries, or fields which hold JSON values in a "smart" way (so you can query the JSON structure), you can create custom types and custom indexes, and all of those are extremely convenient for certain uses, but are not entirely supported in any high-level Pg interface that I use (PHP, psycopg2 or JDBC).

PDO_PGSQL is "good enough" in that it supports all common types and features which are supported with other databases.