I'm reading a PHP book (O'Reilly) and they use a PEAR connect functions for MySQL databasing. Is Pear something my server has to support or would a server with MySQL installed already have it......or......is it something I need to add to my script? The reason why I'm asking is because the functions are not working right now. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with Pear or the fact that my webhosts server isn't working propertly.

Some servers already have it installed by default, others dont.

You can get the whole library or just individual classes here: http://pear.php.net/