http://us.php.net/manual/en/intro.pdo.php
The PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension defines a lightweight, consistent interface for accessing databases in PHP. Each database driver that implements the PDO interface can expose database-specific features as regular extension functions. Note that you cannot perform any database functions using the PDO extension by itself; you must use adatabase-specific PDO driver to access a database server.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/myodbc-configuration-connection-parameters.html
http://webscripts.softpedia.com/script/PHP-Clases/PHP-MySQL-class-generator-12866.html