ADOdb is a Database Extraction Layer that allows the writing of database independent SQL statements. It does this by placing a layer of generic statement execution code between the and the programmer and the PHP database specific database access commands. This allows the writing of portable SQL code that can access multiple databases. For the example the following database specific statements:

MySQL      mysqli_execute
Oracle     oci_execute
SQL Server mssql_execute

can all be replaced by a single ADOdb replacement execute(). In addition, ADOdb provides a number of shortcut commands to commonly used SQL syntax.

ADOdb is not a replacement for the database driver, which must be installed and correctly configured.