PDO binary parameter support proposal

Draft; not accepted. The RFC page (version 0.2, dated 2026-09-29, last modified 2026-10-01) and the official RFC index both list it as Draft. Its discussion and voting threads are marked "tbd". The page contains a vote template showing no votes; no ballot has taken place.

The motivation is that PDO drivers handle binary data inconsistently: SQL Server via PDO_DBLIB needs special quoting, some ODBC drivers return a binary column bound as a string as hex, and some databases convert character encodings on string fetches. A binary column is not necessarily a LOB, and some drivers expect PDO::PARAM_LOB to be a stream.

The RFC offers two alternatives: a dedicated PDO::PARAM_BINARY data type, or a modifier flag combined with PDO::PARAM_STR or PDO::PARAM_LOB. It says the choice will be settled in discussion or, if unclear, by a vote. It notes possible effects on emulated prepares, PDO::ATTR_DEFAULT_STR_PARAM, PDO::ATTR_STRINGIFY_FETCHES and on what drivers report from getColumnMeta(). An implementation pull request is linked from the page.

Limitations: the reviewed text names no target version. Related: support windows.