"Universal" data layer?

[Mastodont]

My colleague asked me if there is some "universal" data access layer for storing and reading data into/from databases or TXT, RTF and XML files ... I think that ODBC is only (cumbersome) way in PHP, am I right?

[kyberfabrikken]

Those formats are very different, so a common interface to them would be so generic that it becomes useless.

[felgall]

You would want a different class in the data layer for handling each of those different types of data.

[elias]

elaborate on the question. if the output should be human readable, maybe docbook?

[Mastodont]

Elias: Output should be only web site. His idea was not about transformation (one storage -> different outputs), but storing (different storages -> one output).

[elias]

read/write on databases and RTF etc as data backend sounds weird.
you have a reason for that? i'd convert every document to one single
format (database) and write various output handlers if needed.

[Mastodont]

As I wrote this is not my idea. I prefer one type of storage, too.

[elias]

say him he should rethink his ideas after his coffee