We've looked at CI's Active Record class and seen how easy it is to:
Set up connections to one or more databases
Do standard SQL read, update, create, and delete queries
Perform other functions that we need to use a database properly
CI's Active Record function is clean and easy to use, and makes coding much clearer to read. It automates database connections, allowing you to abstract the connection information to one config
file.
Now, before going to the next chapter, you may want to take a look at some other functions the database class has to offer:
http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/database/active_record.html.
If you feel like going deeper into the intricacies of CodeIgniter you must take a look at "database caching" (not view caching):