PDO

Meaning

PDO, short for PHP Data Objects, is a consistent interface for working with many kinds of databases from PHP. The manual describes it as a data-access abstraction layer: the same functions issue queries and fetch data whichever database you use, but PDO does not rewrite your SQL, and it needs a database-specific driver. It supports prepared statements with named or question-mark placeholders. Many developers prefer it to MySQLi, which is specific to MySQL, because the approach survives a change of database. See also: Prepared statement, SQL injection, and the guide Working with Forms and Databases in PHP: Core Concepts.