The Benefits and Features of MySQL Connector/ODBC 5.1.8 for Windows Users
Section 21.10.1, MariaDB Connector/ODBC (MySQL) - Stands for MySQL, Improved; this extension is available only in PHP 5. It is intended for use with MySQL 4.1.1 and later. This extension fully supports the authentication protocol used in MySQL 5.0, as well as the Prepared Statements and Multiple Statements APIs. In addition, this extension provides an advanced, object-oriented programming interface. You can read the documentation for the mysqli extension at mysqli . Helpful article can be found at http://www.php.net/manual/en/mysqli.quickstart.php .
mysql-connector-odbc-5.1.8-win32 2.msi
This application provides access to a MySQL database using the industry standard Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) API.It also provides driver-manager based and native interfaces to the MySQL database, with full support for MySQL functionality, including stored procedures, transactions and, with Connector/ODBC 5.1, full Unicode compliance.
Section 21.10.2, MySQL Improved Extension (Mysqli) - Stands for MySQL, Improved; this extension is available only in PHP 5. It is intended for use with MySQL 4.1.1 and later. This extension fully supports the authentication protocol used in MySQL 5.0, as well as the Prepared Statements and Multiple Statements APIs. In addition, this extension provides an advanced, object-oriented programming interface. You can read the documentation for the mysqli extension at http://www.php.net/manual/en/mysqli.installation.php . Helpful article can be found at http://www.php.net/manual/en/mysqli-stmt.bind-result.php and http://www.php.net/manual/en/mysqli-result.metadata.php .