International PHP Magazine: Poll Question: What is the Top Criterion for Scaling PHP?
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The International PHP Magazine has posted the results of the question asked in their latest poll - "What is the Top Criterion for Scaling PHP?"   Of the six options they provided:  Object code caching Template systems Distributed object-caching systems PHP variables that can be set Output Compression Other things that may help  one stood out as a clear winner - "Object code caching". Bringing up second place was "Distributed object-caching systems" and the other options coming in pretty close behind.   Be sure to cast your vote for their latest poll question - "Which is the Most Common Database Problem?"
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Based off of a previous article from Mike Willbanks, Stuart Herbert has posted some of his own thoughts on tuning and tweaking your applications for the best performance you can get out of them.   There's some good advice in there, and I thought it'd be a good idea to quickly add a bit more detail about the separate approaches that Mike raises.   He goes over the APC caching, memcache, the "gzip trick", the "Not Modified" header and optimized SQL statements.   He also mentions one thing that Mike didn't mention - a split between static files (no PHP needed) and their dynamic cousins. Having a more pure Apache (no PHP installed) can help give a minute jump in speed that, depending on the size of the site, could really add up from a user's perspective.
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Matthew Turland, like many in the PHP community these days, has been pondering PHP6 and what it might mean to both the developers and to the language itself:   Be that as it may, as a user with about five years under his belt as of now who has seen all qualities of PHP code ranging from pristine to pedantic, a thought or two has crossed my mind on the subject of the latest upcoming incarnation of the language.   Specifically, he talks about some of the hot topics like namespaces, the mysqlnd driver, Unicode support, and named parameters. Overall, though, his comments are positive, looking toward a brighter future for PHP with this upcoming edition.
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Sometimes developers just don't think about how much trouble they'd cause with a rewrite of existing software. They think that moving up to the latest and greatest is the way to go, and that it makes perfect sense to say out with the old and in with the new. Aaron Wormus disagrees. Well, sometimes - it depends on the circumstances, really.   At ZendCon I talked about "Planning a PHP 4 to PHP 5 codebase rewrite, a practical approach". The talk was based on my own experience, as well as famous discussion of the topic such as Joel Spolsky's "Things you should never do" and the examination of "famous" platform rewrites.   Aaron gives an example of a large company making a move from a COBOL system out to C for a mission critical system. Based on his tale, they didn't put the thought needed into making this move - new development time, keeping old developers on staff, etc - besides the fact that customers don't like change and making a move to another platform is almost definitely going to be noticed by them.
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If you missed the Zend Webcast talking about "Advanced PHP Solutions" with Zeev Suaski, ComputerWorld has your chance to grab the download from it.   PHP continues to enjoy phenomenal growth becoming the de-facto standard for enterprise Web applications. With the introduction of PHP 5, PHP has reached new levels of support for Web Services, XML and Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) meeting the robust demands of the enterprise environment. Learn how you can achieve scalability, performance, availability and reliability for your enterprise-class PHP applications with advanced PHP solutions from Zend Technologies.   In the webcast, Zeev talks about integrating web services, tracking and improving the response times in your application, scaling your applications, and troubleshooting applications down to the exact line of code.
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In an effort to get some thought going about ways to encourage security in PHP applications, Stas has posted an idea about a simplified php.ini setting - production=On.   His idea is that, with this setting on, the PHP installation would:   disable display errors disable phpinfo() turn expose_php off make max_execution_time/memory_limit reasonable and possibly a few others that some developers forget to set correctly  Comments on the post range from disagreement to suggestions on improvement and support.
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The International PHP Magazine has posted results from their latest PHP community poll as voted on by visitors to their site. The question for this poll asked developers what they thought, of the choices on the list, was the most common mistake that PHP developers make.   Coming in at number one by an overwhelming lead was "Not escaping entities and SQL input" (a definite problem indeed) with the next highest option, "Not using a Framework" a full twenty percent lower. The next two options were closer (descending) - "Using old PHP versions" and "No or little use of Object Orientation".   There's a new poll this week for your consideration - this time asking which stage, of the five options, should come first in the development cycle of a typical content management system. Head on over and cast your vote today!
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Christopher Jones has a note on his blog today about the Orcale Develop Conference happening in San Francisco October 23rd through the 25th and some of the PHP involvement there.    First on my ToDo list is Oracle's user conference. PHP is well represented at Oracle Develop. This is a new part of the huge Oracle OpenWorld event running in San Francisco in a few weeks.   Registrations are still open for Oracle Develop. You can register separately or if you register for the full OpenWorld you get the Develop conference gratis, I was told.  Check the fine print on this.    Talks for the conference include:  Rasmus Lerdorf's "Getting Rich with PHP" "Hands-on Lab: Developing and Deploying Oracle and PHP" from a representative from Oracle and Christopher Jones giving a talk on "The PHP/Oracle Experience: Building for Scalability"    Check out the conference website for more information and to register today.
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The International PHP Magazine has posted the results from their latest poll where they asked their readers "which is the most common PHP database problem?"   The options were:  Using MySQL directly Not using auto-increment functionality Using multiple databases Not using relations The n+1 pattern  And coming out on top (with 27.5%) was "Not using relations" in the SQL statements made. Following close behind was "Using MySQL directly" and falling in last was "Not using auto-increment functionality".   Be sure to vote in this week's poll that asks "Which is Truest?" - given several popular opinions on PHP, pick the one that you think is the most true.
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:PHPBuilder.com: AJAX and PHP Part 1Developer.com: Threads Versus The Singleton PatternNick Halstead's Blog: Google Gears Caching of WordPress in PHPDevShed: PHP, MySQL and the PEAR DatabaseDave Dash's Blog: Installing a PHP that can do symfony+doctrine on DreamhostChristopher Jones' Blog: Upgrade PHP with Oracle Application Server on LinuxPHP.net: PHP 5.2.3 ReleasedPro::PHP Podcast: Newscast for May 31st, 2007Secunia.com: PHP Integer Overflow Vulnerability and Security BypassPHPBuilder.com: PHP and Regular Expressions 101
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Luke Welling takes a humorous look at something he misses in PHP - register globals being set to on.    I am aware that there are some things so shocking that you are not supposed to say them in polite company [...] so confronting that they are best kept to yourself regardless of how strongly you believe them. I have a similarly shocking sentiment that I feel I have to share.   I really like register_globals in PHP.    He reminicies about the days gone by of being able to assume that register_globals is turned on, the days of simpler, lighter code that's even easier for the newbies to get into. Anyone for a tshirt?
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On the Zend Developer Zone, there's a new tutorial looking at one of the unsung heroes of the web development world - one that, when you need it, it does what it does well - SQLite.   Is a full-blown database server even necessary for most PHP applications? What about a data-driven website like a blog or a simple family photo album or message board? In these and may other cases, the small, simple, and extremely powerful SQLite may be all you need. Let's take SQLite out for a test drive and see how it performs, find some of the quirks you might run in to, and how to get the most use out of it.   They talk about SQLite being a "staple" in PHP for a while now and how PDO plays so well with it. They move on to the code quickly, giving a simple example of how to create a database, and table, and inserting content into the latter.    Other more advanced features are discussed - data types, speed of queries, using transactions, and cleaning up the code to really make it fly. They even talk about "user defined aggregate functions", a method to make running a set of data through the same processes over and over a snap.
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The International PHP Magazine has posted the results from their latest poll conducted over the week. This time they asked developers what they looked for in a framework.   The options this time were:  An O-O MVC structure ORM / Active Record Good Controller Structure Ajax Interoperability Ability to Incorporate Testing Open Source/Free License Security Good Helpers Scaffolding  With the first option "an OO MVC structure" leading the pack with almost twenty percent. Next in line was (in order of votes): having an Open Source/fre license, bundled with good helpers, good security, and a good controller structure.   Be sure to check out their latest poll too. It asks about security architectures and what developers out there think they should contain.
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Krystian Hoffman has posted to his blog today a few reasons (10 to be exact) that he likes and uses PHP. Fortunately, most of them are some of the best reasons for anyone to use the language.   ended up with ten points on why I use PHP and I guess this would be a good post here on my blog, as it seems people like lists in general and maybe I could get some people out there that aren't really sure about whether PHP is good or bad, to get some insight at least.  Here's some of his list:   The PHP Community The (language's) Performance Its Portability It has strong Object-oriented support   Other things got a mention as well - the low learning curve, low cost, included libraries - but the above few seemed the strongest.
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Cal Evans has posted his notes from the (just passed) Web Builder 2.0 Conference that happened over in Las Vegas. PHP had its presence there through Cal's "PHP Powers Mashups" talk and others like Chris Shiflett.   There was plenty to see and do at the conference besides PHP and Cal highlights just a few:  AJAX Optimization talks  An overview of some Flickr Stats Google's mashup offerings An introduction to  and some talk of benchmarking Ajax  Check out the full post though - it's jam-packed with links and some great event information.
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On the SitePoint PHP Blog today, Troels Knak-Nielsen has written up a post concerning the current state of functional programming in PHP.   With the rise of Javascript, and languages like Python and Ruby, functional programming is becoming more mainstream. Even Java seems to be getting closures in the next version, so does this leave PHP lacking behind or is there an unrealized potential hidden within?   He looks at a few different aspects of functional programming and sees how well PHP fits into them (like dynamic dispatch, binding a variable to a function and an implementation of currying for a function). This last option is the only "true" functional feature that PHP can realistically handle.
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Mike Potter (from Adobe) has issued an invitation for all PHP and Ruby developers attending the MAX Conference to track each other down, as well as him.   I think this would be a perfect time for these groups of people to get together, showcase what you're working on, and talk about the problems that you're facing.  We're working out the details of MAXUP, but if you're going to MAX, plan on arriving on the Sunday so that on Monday we can get together and showcase and talk about the work that's going on with Flex and languages other than Java and ColdFusion.   He suggests using the entry's comments to help coordinate the meetings. The Early Bird pricing is still in effect for the conference, so there's no time like the present to reserve your spot.