Joomla! Programmers Documentation
Manual Index
Introduction
Joomla provides a sophisticated database abstraction layer to simplify the usage for third party developers. New versions of the Joomla Platform API provide additional functionality which extends the database layer further, and includes features such as connectors to a greater variety of database servers and the query chaining to improve readability of connection code and simplify SQL coding.
Joomla can use different kinds of SQL database systems and run in a variety of environments with different table-prefixes. In addition to these functions, the class automatically creates the database connection. Besides instantiating the object you need just two lines of code to get a result from the database in a variety of formats. Using the Joomla database layer ensures a maximum of compatibility and flexibility for your extension.