The MySQLi extension was introduced with PHP version 5.0.0 and the MySQL Native Driver was included in PHP version 5.3.0. i stands for improved in MySQLi and provides various functions to access the MySQL database and to manipulate the data records inside the MySQL database. You would require to call the MySQLi functions in the same way you call any other PHP function.
Audience
This tutorial is designed for Java programmers who would like to understand the PHP MySQLi functions to connect to MySQL in detail and actual usage.