title: How can I determine the column type with PDO?
body: <p>I need a way to determine the type of a database column (varchar/numeric/date/...) when reading from the DB with PDO.</p>
  
  <p>When fetching values from the DB, PDO produces only string values, regardless of the actual type of the table column.</p>
  
  <p>Is there any non driver specific way to get this information? I know that there are SQL statements that retrieve the types for any given table but i'd prefer a more generic solution.</p>
  
  <p><strong><em>EDIT:</strong>
  PDOStatement::getColumnMeta() is of no use to me, because it's not supported by the PDO driver I use at the moment (Oracle).</em></p>