Community News: Official Press Release on Zend PHP5 Certification
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Zend has finally released a press release (officially) about their latest certification offering - the Zend PHP5 Certification.   Here's a bit from the official press release (the full content is here):    Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP company, today announced the availability of Zend PHP Certification for PHP 5, enabling developers to test and certify their expertise in new areas such as object oriented PHP programming, creating and using web-services with PHP, as well as PHP security.   Zend PHP 5 Certification was the result of extensive communication with the Zend Certified Engineer community to determine how the program can be most useful for PHP developers. Some of the community's top domain experts have contributed certification questions and reviewed the program to ensure that it is complete and tests for relevant skills. Becoming a Zend Certified Engineer gives developers an edge in today's competitive technology market. Certification also helps enterprise management quickly qualify new hires, and keep current development teams knowledgeable about the latest technology.    They've also announced that they will be offering the certification and classes to help developers prepare for it at the upcoming Zend/PHP Conference & Expo happening in October/November.
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Cal Evans is attending this year's php/db|works conference up in Toronto and has reported back with his summary of the first day of the conference - "Tutorial Day".   Day One at php|works was dedicated to tutorials. Paul Reinheimer did a 6 hour crash course for those who wanted to take the Zend Certification Test here at the conference. I talked with a three attendees at the Crash Course to get their opinion on how it was going. Cairan Walsh, who is not currently Zend Certified found the course interested although he thought maybe it was a bit too basic.   Cal notes that just about everyone that attended the "Crash Course" was pleased with the contents/teacher/etc. He also mentions his visits to the "Advanced XML and Web Services" and "Extending PHP" tutorials.
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Zend has an announcement today about their latest PHP Online Training Courses for anyone to take.
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The latest release of PHP in the PHP 5.2.x series has been posted for download to the main PHP website today - version 5.2.3.   The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.3. This release continues to improve the security and the stability of the 5.X branch as well as addressing two regressions introduced by the previous 5.2 releases. These regressions relate to the timeout handling over non-blocking SSL connections and the lack of HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA in certain conditions. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this release.   Updates in this new version include many security fixes and enhancements - check out the Changelog for complete information.   Check out other comments on the release from Ilia Alshanetsky and Stefan Esser.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted an announcement about a new book from php|architect (authored by DevZone's own Cal Evans) - Guide to Programming with the Zend Framework.   This is a project I've been interested in since it's very beginning, mainly because I'm the author of this particular tome. [...] The php|architect web site was a bit more helpful giving a breakdown of the contents of the book and a useful quote.   The book covers topics on the framework like the parts of MVC, web services, authorization, exceptions and even some tutorials to help you get started (including a look at the brand new Zend_Layout class).
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Sebastian Bergmann posts about the tutorial he (and fellow developers Matthew O'Phinney and Mike Naberenzy) will be presenting at this year's Zend/PHP Conference & Expo - a look at PHP Development Best Practices and Unit Testing.   From the official description:   PHP development by teams of developers introduces challenges beyond the mere coding of great algorithms. Agreements are needed about tools, specifications, architecture, design patterns, coding standards, testing, documentation, source code control, staging and deployment. This tutorial session aims to introduce developers to a set of best practices that will help them deliver applications fast and move them to deployment with confidence.   You can check out some of the other tutorials for the upcoming conference as scheduled here.
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In his latest blog post, Wolfgang Drews is pointing out a training class his other site, DynamicWebPages.de, is doing for the Zend Framework.   Just a short shameless Plug for all who it may concern: Dynamic Web Pages holds a free information webinar about the new php5-certification in german language next week wednesday, 13th of december at 3 p.m.   Christian Wenz with be the facilitator and you can get complete information and sign up on phpzertifizierung.eu.
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On the Zend Developer Zone, there's a new post pointing to the second part of their look at the Manning Publishing book "PHP in Action".   If you've been anxiously awaiting part two of this series then your wait is over. Here's a short introduction to the section part of this series written by the author of the book, Dagfinn Reiersol. I had the privilege of meeting Dagfinn at phpuk last week. Below the introduction is the link I know youâve been waiting for.   The new PDF they link to focus on two different patterns - the Decorator (a wrapper class) pattern and the Null Object (an object that works like the others but does nothing behind the scenes) pattern.
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Scott Mattocks, like so many others, has just reciently recieved notification that he's been accepted as a speaker for the Zend/PHP Conference & Expo this fall. He talks more about his speech in his latest post.   My session, "Consusming Web Services with PHP-GTK 2&#8243; will be a look at how to turn a web services API into a desktop application. I only have fifty minutes so it won't be very heavy on implementation details. Instead it will look more at representing different data structures, collecting different types of data and how creating a desktop application can make life easier for the company and the end user.   Scott joins other speakers for this great event, including speakers like Ilia Alshanetsky, Wez Furlong, and Zeev Suraski. Be sure to check back on the Zend site soon to see when Scott and others' talks will be held.
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Ivo Jansch has posted a reminder about a webinar he's going to be hosting for Zend about taking the leap to move from PHP4 to a PHP5 production environment.   Tomorrow I'm doing a webinar for Zend: I will be talking about migrating from PHP4 to PHP5. I won't go into the technical details so much, but I will talk about why to migrate and how to migrate. I will talk about both the benefits and the risks.   If you'd like to sign up, check out Zend's webinars page and enroll in the "PHP4 to PHP5 Migration" event. It happens Wednesday, Oct 24th at 9am Pacific (PDT) and will last about one hour.
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Focusing on the enterprise, PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) tools vendor Zend Technologies is shipping Tuesday version 3.6 of its Zend Platform application server for PHP as well as Zend Studio for Eclipse, an IDE for PHP based on Eclipse open source technology.The two products "take [Zend products] to another step toward enterprise-readiness," said Andi Gutmans, Zend co-CTO. PHP, meanwhile, runs around 40 percent of the Web, he said.Featured in Zend Platform 3.6 are capabilities to monitor HTTP, Apache, and Java events; expanded performance alerts; and better diagnostics through the debugging of production problems on development servers. These improvements are part of Zend Platform's "PHP intelligence" functions for monitoring PHP application performance.Zend Platform monitors PHP applications in real time, reporting on script errors, database and performance issues, and other matters. Downtime is reduced by recording the full context for reported problems to enable root cause diagnostics and short time to resolution, Zend said.Also highlighted in version 3.6 are automatic output compression to save bandwidth and enhanced job queues for deferred and offline processing. An improved download server optimizes delivery of large content and media files. Version 3.6 also features expanded options for caching content, with support for file or URL-based caching, client-side caching, and in-memory or disk-based caching, Zend said.With client-side caching, a user can load a Web page; local cache will maintain that page if it does not change so the page does not need to be reloaded over and over, Gutmans said.With this release Zend is offering smarter, URL-based caching as an alternative to individual script-based caching, said enterprise software analyst Vishwanath Venugopalan, of The 451 Group. URL-based caching "brings it closer to how an end-user interacts with an application," he said.This approach is likely to improve application performance, Venugopalan said. With URL-based caching, Web applications leveraging MVC (model view controller) can be cached, Zend said.Zend Platform also accommodates Java systems, Venugopalan said. PHP and Java are becoming more intertwined, with PHP being used for development and mixing with server-side Java, he said."When Java systems are included in a transaction, the Java integration features of Zend Platform will enable capturing both the Java and the PHP side of the story when diagnosing an event," said Venugopalan.High-availability and tools for cluster configuration and support are improved in version 3.6 as well. Zend Platform can be clustered across an estimated several hundred servers, Gutmans said.Zend Studio for Eclipse is built on top of the Eclipse PDT (PHP Development Tools) project. Studio improves the quality of PHP applications, speeds development cycles, and simplifies complex projects, Zend said. It features a set of editing, debugging, analysis, and database tools. Agile development processes are supported, such as unit testing, refactoring, and code coverage. Eclipse plug-ins can be accessed for capabilities such as database access and source control.Zend Studio for Eclipse costs $399 per developer. A special introductory price of $299 is in effect for a limited time. Zend Framework subscriptions start at $1,500 per server.Both products support the Zend Framework application framework, which has been downloaded more than 3 million times, Gutmans said.
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On the Zend Developer Zone, Cal Evans has posted a quick look at one of the new offerings from the Manning Publishing group - "PHP in Action".   My buddy Olivia over at Manning Publications sent us a present recently. They are working on the title PHP in Action and they sent us a chapter to share with you. PHP in Action is scheduled to release in April of this year but it's available now in "Manning Early Release Program", or MEAP. MEAP is a cool program that allows you to buy the book long before it is released and have access to the chapters as they are released. Then, when the final dead-tree edition ships, they will send you one. The great thing is, there is no additional cost for MEAP.   He links to the book's description on the Manning site and gives some credit to the authors, Dagfinn Reiersol with Marcus Baker and Chris Shiflett. And, of course, the link to the sample chapter from the book - a look at Design Patterns.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted today about a new webinar from Zend touting "everything you need to know" about the PHP 5 certification exam that the company offers.   Zend Certified Engineers are the most sought after PHP developers. [...] To become a Zend Certified Engineer developers must pass the Certification exam covering a wide range of PHP topics. Attend the Zend Certified Engineer Webinar and hear all the details about the exam.   The webinar will happen on January 30th at about 9am (PST) and will be hosted by Beth Gomez. You can reserve your spot today by signing up over on Zend's pages on Webex.com or just get more information about it from this page over on the Zend site.
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Aaron Wormus is back today on the Zend Developer Zone with another in his "Hidden Gems" series. This time, he takes a look at the "Zend Plumbing", those bits of connective code that help you make your Zend Framework applications work.   The functionality that he covers in this article are some of the min parts that a lot of ZF coders use every day and might not know it:  the Zend class (providing a suite of helper methods) built in Wrapper functions:  loadFile loadClass loadInterface isReadable dump exception  the Zend registry  Each of these is briefly described with some sample code for the loadFile, loadClass, exceptions and the Registry to give you an idea of how to use it all. As always, you can check out the Zend Framework website for all the details on each of these functionality bits.
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The latest weekly summary for the PHP mailing lists has been posted over on the Zend Developer Zone. This week, discussions included:  Sandboxed semaphores Focus on *printf [continued] PHP 5.2.1 RC2 and PHP 4.4.5 RC1 It's all in the HEAD  Descriptions of each of the headings are provided, including code and a "short version" for those on the run.   Be sure to check back each week for a new summary.
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Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:Zend Developer Zone: php|works - Day Two WrapupDevShed: Invoice Management in a PHP Invoicing SystemJared White's Blog: Developer Preview 2 of Willowgarden has been released todayZend Developer Zone: php|works - Day One WrapupP&aacute;draic Brady's Blog: PFP II: Return of Patterns For PHPPHPHacks.com: Generate OpenOffice documents with PHPThinkPHP Blog: SQL injections for dummies - and how to fix themILoveJackDaniels.com: Regular Expressions Cheat SheetDevShed: Tracking Website Statistics with PHPJob Posting: Red Ventures Seeks Mid/Sr Web Developer (Charlotte, NC)Scott Mattocks' Blog: PHP-GTK News #22Community News: Senza Limiti Acquires Ajax-based PHP Grid, Plans to Open Source ItAlexander Netkachev's Blog: Installing Propel object persistence layer for Web applicationDevShed: Main Methods of the DirectoryIterator Class in PHP 5Ilia Alshanetsky's Blog: PHP 5.2.0 RC4 Released!
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In a new post to his blog today, Matthew O'Phinney dives in to some of the more advanced features that the Zend_Form component of the Zend Framework has to offer.   I've been working on  for the past few weeks, and it's nearing release readiness. There are a number of features that Cal didn't cover in his DevZone coverage (in part because some of them weren't yet complete) that I'd like to showcase.   These additional features include internationalization, element grouping and array support. He looks at each of these, including some sample code where needed, and shows you how they can be useful to you and your ZF application.