When working on Easypopulate many years ago and to support the ability of the software to work on multiple systems and retain features that had originally been added, it was "necessary" to provide some sort of means to switch between the two types of mysql database handlers of the mysql and mysqli styles.
It would reduce the complexity of the code if the needed process to continue to support operation could do so with less extra/unique code. Ultimately reducing to Zen Cart code would make it as compatible as possible, but there remain a few features that would need to be reworked to support that in its entirety. Once those features are reworked, then the query style can be reverted to standard Zen Cart features.
When working on Easypopulate many years ago and to support the ability of the software to work on multiple systems and retain features that had originally been added, it was "necessary" to provide some sort of means to switch between the two types of mysql database handlers of the mysql and mysqli styles.
It would reduce the complexity of the code if the needed process to continue to support operation could do so with less extra/unique code. Ultimately reducing to Zen Cart code would make it as compatible as possible, but there remain a few features that would need to be reworked to support that in its entirety. Once those features are reworked, then the query style can be reverted to standard Zen Cart features.