PHP and ASP.NET Go Head-to-Head
"When it comes to Web development these days, you have a lot of
options. Many of these methods involve preprocessing—that is, embedding
code into HTML pages with special tags that signal to a preprocessor
that they contain code, and that it should do something with it. Much
like a CGI, this code is then run on the server, and it returns some
content, which then assumes part of the shape of the resulting HTML
page sent back to the browser. Both the open source scripting language
PHP and languages within Microsoft's ASP.NET framework fall into this
category; JavaServer Pages (JSP) and Perl/Mason operate this way as
well.
In this article I'll focus on PHP, the technology Oracle has chosen to
incorporate into its products..."
http://otn.oracle.com/pub/articles/hull_asp.html
Migrating from PHP 4 to PHP 5
In presentation format, Derick Rethans presents the changes in PHP's
object model, object casting, compatibility mode, "strict" coding,
MySQL changes, the command-line interface, and much more...
http://www.derickrethans.nl/pres-breaking/talk.html
MySQL-PHP Restriction Fears Unwarranted
"Open-source database vendor MySQL recently initiated some restrictions
on the bundling of MySQL libraries with the PHP scripting language.
Some observers criticized the restrictions as an example of the
fragility of open-source technology, suggesting that the limitations
could break the easy-deployment model of LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP).
As it turns out, their fears were unwarranted..."
http://www.internetwk.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=18700048
Microsoft: Defining the Game
Jeff seems to like Cringley's statement of "The central point was that
paying too much attention to Microsoft simply allows Microsoft to
define the game. And when Microsoft gets to define the game, they
ALWAYS win." A nice statement, but nothing more than a nice statement,
other than that, its all incorrect... Microsoft has won in the past due
to many factors, and none of them related to `Let them define the
game'..."
http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/archive/2004/Apr-24.html
SimpleXML
Folks, this is breakthrough stuff... 'When people ask me "What is
SimpleXML?" I often quip, "XML isn't the solution to all your problems;
SimpleXML ensures it isn't the root of your problems!"
Those of you who have parsed XML with PHP4, or are currently dealing
with XML parsing in PHP4, know that it can indeed be very painful to
handle documents with any degree of complexity. You either need to use
the SAX approach and write a handwritten parser for every document, or
you need to use the DOM extension; which (in addition to its tendency
to crash, leak and generally misbehave under heavy usage) involves the
pain of processing documents..."
http://www.zend.com/php5/articles/php5-simplexml.php
Self-Replicating PHP
"Doug Ross solves this interesting problem in PHP: to write a source
program that, when compiled and executed, will produce as output an
exact copy of its source. This is trickier than it sounds, because
using the file system or intermediate storage is cheating. I admit I
looked at Doug's code with sheer incomprehension, so I turned off the
computer and went to the shower..."
http://php.weblogs.com/2004/05/12#a3504
PHP 5 Release Candidate 2 is Here
"The second Release Candidate of PHP 5 is now available! This mostly
bug fix release improves PHP 5's stability and irons out some of the
remaining issues before PHP 5 can be deemed release quality. Note that
it is still not recommended for mission-critical use but people are
encouraged to start playing with it and report any problems. Key
changes since Release Candidate 1 include..."
http://www.zend.com/zend/download-php.php
Dangers of Over-Engineering
"PHP frameworks are popular. Everyone is creating one. If someone isn't
busy writing their own, they are using one. At one point, even I wanted
to write my own framework, publish it for the world, and reap the
rewards that are fame and ego. But I didn't. Real life and work
intervened, and I didn't have time. Never enough time. I have learned
a lot about the different frameworks that are out there, and I have
learned a lot about the different development methodologies..."
http://www.phpcomplete.com/node/view/51
PHP Encoders: Which one is the best?
"I have a requirement, and that requirement is to find a PHP encoder.
There are many out there, including Zend Encoder, ionCube, SafePHP,
PHP Code Lock, and probably more I missed. Basically, the requirements
for this encoder is more than just an encoder. I would like have it
do the following..."
http://www.phpcomplete.com/node/view/8
PHP Popularity Scoreboard
Mar. 2004 count of domains running PHP: 15,528,732 domains
Mar. 2004 count of IP addresses running PHP: 1,343,899 IP addresses
Organizations using PHP
As usual, we'll wrap up with our traditional list of significant
organizations using PHP.
CapitalOne, NASA, the W3C, HP, Google, Deutsche Bank, Redhat,
Lycos, Cisco, Ericsson, Volvo, Motorola, SourceForge, Honda, Xoom,
WinAmp, Sony Music, Vodafone, CBS, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young,
the US Army, UPI, the New York Yankees, Southwestern Bell,
the San Diego Zoo, the Oakland Raiders, Audi, Subaru, VA Linux,
Winamp, Duke University, Quicken, The Village Voice, Undernet,
Access Micro, Columbus Dispatch, Indianapolis Star, Yahoo,
Indiana University, Deutsche Telecomm, Bang & Olufsen, Siemens,
Unilever, Philips, BMC, NTT, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Dialpad, BMC,
Mitsubishi, MP3.com, the Arizona Republic, Deloitte Consulting,
the US Navy, Nokia, Valero, Electronic Arts
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