How well do PHP and Oracle fit together in an enterprise setting?

Question

We use Oracle and PHP together with some success. It seems there are a lot of rough edges as compared to, for instance, Java + Oracle. I am familiar with the Underground PHP + Oracle guide and that there is information scattered around the net. While OCI8 seems to work in most cases, there is noticeably a lack of support for PDO. There is an Oracle PDO extension but it is buggy and Oracle itself suggests against using it in the Underground guide.

I guess what I'm saying is that MySQL and PostgreSQL support in PHP appears to be much more mature.

This is definitely a community wiki, as I am trying to get a feel for what other organizations using PHP + Oracle together are doing. Do you use the PDO_OCI extension even though it is not recommended, or do you use OCI8 exclusively? What PHP frameworks do you use? Is it frustrating to develop with these two technologies? Have you migrated from PHP to something else in an enterprise setting, and if so, what?

EDIT: How do I mark a post as community wiki? Seems not to be an option any longer.

Answer 1

I use adodb with PHP and Oracle with great results. It is a pain to configure but once up and running I've never had any issues.

Answer 2

We use OCI8 exclusively though we do so through an interim server so that our Oracle installation isn't placed directly on the 'net.

We're not using any recognised framework and simply treat the data as objects when it gets to our public-facing site.

The only things to look out for are changes in character sets, properly binding your variables and some sort of protection to prevent your Oracle server being killed.