title: PHP PDO and MySQLi
body: <p>I just finished an introduction course in PHP, and throughout the stackoverflow forum people have recommended that I switch to PDO, prepared statements or MYSQLi, I briefly checked the manual but most of it went over my head. </p>
  
  <p>I've been using mysql_* functions up till now so these concepts are new to me. I think they are used to access and perform database specific actions, but I'm not sure.</p>
  
  <p>So what is the difference between PDO, prepared statements and MySQLi, are they different features that accomplishes the same task? Are they compatible in a script or is it "choose one or the other"? And lastly which offers the best performance?</p>
  
  <p>Update: Thanks for the answers, I'll be hunting for more PDO tutorials. </p>
  
  <p>For reference I also found the following posts useful:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10696696/which-one-is-fast-and-light-mysqli-or-pdo">Which one is fast and light - mysqli or PDO</a></p>
  
  <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13569/mysqli-or-pdo-what-are-the-pros-and-cons">mysqli or PDO - what are the pros and cons?</a></p>