| BODY: The PHP
Symbolic Debugger |
| The Bike Odyssey Debugger Y (BODY - with applogies to Roy &
HG) is a fully functional Symbolic Debugger for PHP that plugs a
very big hole left by this popular OpenSource web development
platform.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| ASP+
versus ASP |
| As you have read throughout this article, ASP+ has a few
issues with doing things that ASP would handle normally. There are a
lot of caveats to using ASP+, and you must do things a certain way
if you wish to receive any benefits, which restricts your
application greatly. On one hand, Microsoft has tried to let the
developer do less manual coding, but has sacrificed flexibility for
it.
Consequently, ASP+ is more difficult to manage and write, rather
than easier, as its framers would have it. There are many "little
things" that must be taken into account, and it is easy to see how
beginners, and even ASP pros, will spend hours scratching their
heads wondering why something so simple doesn't work.
In the end, it may become apparent that ASP and ASP+ must be used
side by side for next generation web applications. ASP+ offers some
great new features, though with hefty costs, and ASP will
(hopefully) still be around to balance those costs and offer
functionality that ASP+ cannot.
See Also:
 An Overview of
ASP.NET
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Background
Processing in PHP: using ticks |
| Today we talk about a previously undocumented feature in PHP,
ticks.
Ok, basically, Zend engine has a feature where after execution
of a certain number of statements (ticks) it can call another
function. This ia all C API for now. What I've done is made that C
function go through a list of PHP registered functions and call them
one-by-one after the specified number of 'ticks' has been
executed. -- Andrei Zmievski
Well the city slicker is back in town. Had a great time at the
plantation, driving a 4 wheel drive through mud and flying wild
chickens (they are lean and can fly very fast unlike the naked ones
you see at the supermarket). Any adventures? Nearly fell out of a
speeding jeep last night after imbibing an unhealthy quantity of
wine - grabbed hold of the wildly swinging open door for dear life
and survived.
Not easy running an estate. My friend the estate manager has to
deal with drunks, gangster extortions, pilfering and union problems,
and then worry about how to scientifically improve the yield of palm
oil.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
IDE.PHP
|
| Ide.php is a web-based editor (written in PHP!) for quick
development of server-side code. It offers a rapid prototyping
environment, letting the user test and save snippets of code with
minimal overhead.
Really cool.
In other news, there is a new article on using CyberCash
with PHP in PHPBuilder (on Christmas day!) Those people never
seem to take a holiday.
 I will be getting a life
though. Will be gone for a few days to visit a friend's palm tree
plantation and commune with jungle leeches and mosquitoes.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| PHP
& Java |
| The Java extension is an extremely exciting tool. By learning
how to use this module, you can extend PHP by the power of all
available Java classes. To show you the basics of the Java
extension, this article will cover installation and a few code
examples of using PHP and Java together -- Mark Nold and Joost
Soeterbroek
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| PHP 4.0.4
Released |
| Change Log
Download
The PHP Group is pleased to announce the release of the fourth
maintenance release of PHP 4.0.
The PHP Group has adopted extended procedures to improve the
overall quality and reliability of the release process and the
resulting software.
This release has undergone strict testing by our new QA team to
ensure that this is the most stable release ever on all supported
platforms. It includes improvements for a large number of defects
and numerous enhancements in the PHP core, the language
implementation and extensions.
The source distribution is immediately available, binary builds
for Win32 are expected to follow later.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| PostgreSQL:
Taking E-Business Up a Notch |
| Postgres' latest version, 7.0, is close to clearing the final
hurdles to widespread adoption by enterprise-level businesses. Its
next iteration, 7.1, will likely propel it into a position that
seriously threatens the reigning commercial giants.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Optimize
PHP 4: A Review of the Zend Optimizer |
| Anyone developing in PHP should at least try the Optimizer. It's
quick and easy to install. You may get lucky with performance, and
after all, it's free.
| Test |
Optimizer Disabled |
Optimizer Enabled |
Performance Increase |
| PHP 3 Array |
12s |
9s |
25% |
| PHP 4 Array |
43s |
40s |
9% |
| MD5 Encrypt |
40s |
36s |
10% |
| D/B Dump |
57s |
46s |
18% |
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| ADODB 0.90 |
| ADODB is a database wrapper library that supports many
databases, including MSSQL, MySQL, PostgresSQL, Interbase, ADO,
ODBC, Oracle, Oci8, Sybase, Access, Visual FoxPro.
ADODB 0.90 is now available. I have had to make many changes in
the internals because we are developing internal applications with
ADODB and really exercising the code.
Many Changes:
 Added Sybase support. Yay! Contributed by Toni (ttunkka@suomi24.fi).
Added adodb-session.php for PHP4 session support.
I discovered that counting the number of records in a
SELECT statement reduces performance for many databases. See http://php.net/manual/function.sybase-num-rows.php.
So I added a new global variable $ADODB_COUNTREC. Set to false for
high speed selects.
Lots of testing of Microsoft ADO. Should be more stable
now.
Changed behaviour of RecordSet.GetMenu() to support size
parameter (listbox) properly.
Added emptyDate and emptyTimeStamp to RecordSet class that
defines how to represent empty dates.
Added MetaColumns($table) that returns an array of
ADODBFieldObject's listing the columns of a table.
Added transaction support for PostgresSQL; thanks to "Eric
G. Werk" egw@netguide.dk.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| PHP4 Session Handler
using ADODB |
| PHP4 is packed with good features. One of the most popular is
session variables. These are variables that persist throughout a
session, as the user moves from page to page. Session variables are
great holders of state information and other useful stuff.
PHP4's session variables are stored in files by default. However
for true scalability, it is better to store this data in a database
using a database wrapper library like ADODB.
Discuss (1
response) (Join /
Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| ODBC
Socket Server for PHP |
| One machine will have the operating system of your choice,
the web server of your choice and PHP on it. The other machine will
have Windows, MS Access, and ODBC on it.
The socketserver on the Windows machine will look for connections
on a TCP/IP port, PHP will generate XML commands and send them to
the socket server. The socket server will then execute the SQL
statements in the commands and pass another XML document back to
PHP. Finally, PHP will parse the XML document and manipulate the
resulting recordset.
By Tim Uckun
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Upgrading and
Configuring PHP Applications |
| I've installed several PHP applications on our company's Web
servers over the past few months. What I hate most is upgrades. I
always forget to backup the configuration files first, and overwrite
them during the installation.
So I had a brain-wave. Why not keep all configuration files in a
standard directory: phpconfig. All config files used by an
application, say ADODB, will be stored in
phpconfig/ADODB/adodb-config.inc.php. Then when we upgrade
the application directory, the config files are not modified.
To handle upgrades, we embed a version number as a global
variable in each config file. When we run an application, we check
the version number and alert the user to upgrade the config file if
the version number is too low. I would suggest using a numeric
variable such as $PHPCONFIG_VER.
To make it easy for all PHP applications to find the phpconfig
directory, use this sort of directory structure:
/phpconfig/App1
/phpconfig/App2
/phpconfig/App3
/App1
/App2
/App3
Then App1 can access its config files using include_once('../phpconfig/App1/App1-config.inc.php')
Email me at jlim@natsoft.com.my if you
have any comments about this idea. If any other developers would
like to use this concept, let me know. I am planning to write some
PHP code to support phpconfig. Open source of course.
Latest: Just rediscovered that relative paths don't work properly
in PHP because all paths are relative to the current web page, not
the current file PHP is parsing. Back to the drawing board...
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Learn Netscape 6's Document
Object Model (DOM) |
| The above link is a tutorial on DOM for Netscape 6 that I found
useful.
The Document Object Model (DOM) is an API and object model that
describes all the HTML tags on a web page. DOM is used in
conjunction with Javascript to create interactive Web pages.
Internet Explorer has supported DOM since IE 4.0, but Netscape has
only caught up recently with the release of Netscape 6.
Naively, I thought since my Javascript code already worked with
Internet Explorer, it would port easily to Netscape 6 since both of
them support the W3C Document Object Model.
Boy was I wrong. Yesterday I began to test my old Javascript code
with Mozilla M18. I got so
messed up with coding that I forgot to post a news item yesterday.
In IE, HTML objects are manipulated with
document.all.[object]. In Netscape 6, you use the ugly
document.getElementsByTagName('*').[object]. Some functions
are totally different; other functions have the same name, but take
different parameters in IE and Netscape 6. Uggh.
Official DOM
Specs from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
 Let's hope Netscape and
Microsoft kiss and make up. Let's have standards that are really
compatible!
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| PHP Online Presentations
|
| There are lots of great PHP tutorials and presentations on this
web page. PHP.net is so huge that I only discovered these online
seminars recently. Perhaps it's time PHP.net had a site map?
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| ADODB 0.80 |
| ADODB is a database wrapper library for PHP4 that supports a
variety of databases.
Changes:
-Added support for charSet for Interbase. Suggested
by Hélio Silva helio@helio.com.br.
-Implemented MetaTables for most databases to list available
tables.
-PostgreSQL is more stable. Thanks to all the testers who sent in
reports.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Nexidion Designer - IDE and Debugger
for PHP |
| Nexidion Designer is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
for web development on Linux. Although Designer is great for
developing traditional static HTML pages, it is particularly
targeted at dynamic web sites. This preview release contains the
first fully interactive PHP debugger, allowing you to set
breakpoints and step through your PHP code line by line, monitoring
the values of any variable or expressions.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| PHP.Pirus
- First PHP virus |
| [PHP.Pirus] is the first known virus to infect PHP files. PHP is
becoming increasingly popular as a server side web site scripting
language similar to Perl. Users browsing web sites are not at risk.
It is a direct action infector of .php (other than itself) and .htm
files in the current directory. Infection consists of appending to
files a PHP script that will load and execute the virus. Thus
infected files do not contain the virus itself, only a reference to
it.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| SteelBlue
|
| It's an open-sourced ColdFusion-like language that many users
have stated is easier to use than PHP. Really. Yes, PHP is a pain to
learn. -- Dan Turner
PHP programmers tend not to like tag based languages such as
ColdFusion or BlueSteel; some people say pa-tato, others say
pata-to.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Basic
Installation of PHP on a Unix System |
| The configuration system that PHP uses for installation is
one of those nice, simple things in life that makes it rosy. At
first it might seem a little confusing, but it's really very easy.
So let's dive right in. -- Darrell Brogdon
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| phpShop: a PHP eCommerce
Solution |
| phpShop has a web-based interface to store management screens
for users, shoppers, products, attributes, orders and other
features. Store building is extremely flexible by using PHP and
custom phpShop classes. Functionality can be easily enhanced by
developers using phpShop's module register. phpShop also has
permission checking on all function calls and page displays to add
user-based management of your site.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Netscape
Goes Bonkers |
| Way back in April, I wrote that Netscape made the "single
worst strategic mistake that any software company can make" by
deciding to rewrite their code from scratch. Lou Montulli, one of
the 5 programming superstars who did the original version of
Navigator, emailed me to say, "I agree completely, it's one of the
major reasons I resigned from Netscape." This one decision cost
Netscape 3 years. -- Joel on Software
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Freeware
Port Scanners: Plug the Holes |
| A port is essentially an opening into your computer, and it
can be hacked. Someone can infect your machine with a Trojan horse
in this way, and that's only one of a host of distressing
possibilities. If you open your computer to the outside world,
you're vulnerable to attack -- period. Port-scanning software tests
your network to determine which TCP ports are vulnerable to
attack.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Apache Toolbox for
Linux |
| Bryan Andrew's Apache Toolbox is a Swiss army knife of a
script, providing a customisable, menu-driven interface to ...
- Apache - our favourite web server
- SSL - Secure Sockets Layer for secure web server interactions
- PHP, mod_perl, and mod_fastcgi - for speedy scripting language
support
- MySQL - the ubiquitous lightning fast database server
- OpenLDAP, mod_auth_ldap, mod_auth_radius, mod_auth_pop3,
mod_auth_sys and mod_accessref - various means of authentication
and authorisation
- WebDAV and mod_layout - for simple, yet powerful Web design
functionality
- mod_dynvhost, mod_throttle, mod_gzip, and mod_bandwidth - for
efficient hosting and server control
- And more! Apache Toolbox is customisable and has support (it's
just a shell script after all) for anything else you'd care to
plug in.
Apache Toolbox comes in two different flavours: a) just the
script, which will download the various component sources as needed,
or b) the full package, including the script and all required
sources. The toolbox even catches RPM conflicts should they
arise. -- Rael Dornfest, O'Reilly Network
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| ADODB 0.70
Released |
| ADODB is a database wrapper library for PHP4 modelled on
Microsoft's ADO. You are all urged to upgrade because of a bug in
MoveNext(), which did not handle EOF properly.
--Calls by reference have been removed
(call_time_pass_reference=Off) to ensure compatibility with future
versions of PHP, except in Oracle 7 driver due to a bug in
php_oracle.dll.
--PostgreSQL database driver contributed by Alberto Cerezal (acerezalp@dbnet.es).
--Oci8 driver for Oracle 8 contributed by George Fourlanos (fou@infomap.gr).
--Added mysqlt database driver to support MySQL 3.23 which has
transaction support.
--Oracle default date format (DD-MON-YY) did not match ADODB
default date format (which is YYYY-MM-DD). Use ALTER SESSION to
force the default date.
--Error message checking is now included in test suite.
-- MoveNext() did not check EOF properly -- fixed.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Groove
should do wonders for peer-to-peer computing |
| Groove is hard to pigeonhole, because it has so many useful
attributes. It's a collaboration tool for small groups of people who
work at the edge of large enterprises -- the people who do the real
work -- and across organizations. It's a tool for families and
friends who want to communicate more easily and efficiently. It's
instant-messaging on steroids. And that's just for starters. --
Dan Gillmor
Interview with Jack
Ozzie.
Discuss (1
response) (Join /
Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| An
Analysis of .NET by Sun |
| "The Java platform is an excellent technology that enjoys
tremendous success. Rather than embracing the cross-platform, vendor
neutral solution which is the Java platform, like most of the
industry, Microsoft is still pushing a single platform, vendor
specific solution. "
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Component
Software: The Next Generation |
Forget about .NET for the moment. The language neutrality
that already exists in the Microsoft space (eg COM) is something
that the Linux and open source worlds could really use --
article by Jon Udell.
In my opinion, Microsoft's great contribution to Computer Science
was to realise that Object-Oriented Programming was overrated at a
time when OOP was the rage, and that a simpler abstraction --
components -- was sufficient to develop one of the most
successful software interfaces of all time: COM.
When I was younger I used to like powerful class libraries such
as MacApp or Smalltalk's; but I have come to realise that a
wonderful and complicated inheritance hierarchy can be too
confusing.
Too much OOP means you have to learn too much to do too little.
-- John
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Deep
Inside C# |
| An Interview with Microsoft Chief Architect Anders Hejlsberg.
Anders Hejlsberg is one of the greatest programmers of all time.
He is also known for having designed Turbo Pascal, one of the first
languages available for PCs. Anders licensed Turbo Pascal to Borland
and later led the team that created Delphi, a highly successful
visual design tool for building client server applications
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| ADODB 0.60 Released. Also
Experimental PostgreSQL support. |
| ADODB 0.60 fixes some ODBC and ADO constructor bugs. Some
Interbase debugging code removed.
Also in a separate download, we have PostgreSQL support, thanks
to Alberto Cerezal. This is still experimental as I do not have
access to a PostgreSQL database, so I cannot check for any problems
in the source code.
Discuss (2
responses) (Join
/ Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Windows
2000 not ready for web servers |
| Windows 2000 is not secure enough to use on internet connected
servers, according to a senior security analyst at Gartner.
John Pescatore said that companies should wait until the end of
next year before running the operating system on web servers.
"I would not recommend Windows 2000 for internet connected web
servers today," he warned. "The operating system has a major
increase in security over Windows NT but it is still just out of the
box. It has a lot of embedded components that are not sufficiently
tested."
See also Microsoft
plays down second hacker attack.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Graphing with
PHP |
| Want to graph the daily visitors to your web site? Need to
perform online reporting for your intranet? Here are some packages
for graphing with PHP. Some require php_gd.dll.
Keywords: Chart Graph Charts Graphs
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| PHP4 HTTP
Compression Speeds up the Web |
| Very nice code snippet by Sun Jin Hu.
Most newer browsers since 1998/1999 have been equipped to
support the HTTP 1.1 standard known as "content-encoding."
Essentially the browser indicates to the server that it can accept
"content encoding" and if the server is capable it will then
compress the data and transmit it. The browser decompresses it and
then renders the page.
Some of the theory
behind this idea.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| An
Open Letter From Bob Young, Red Hat CEO |
| The legacy software industry is built on the proprietary
binary-only model where not only does the user not get the source
code he needs to make changes, but worse he receives the product
under a license that essentially says that if you make any
improvements to the technology you are using, if you solve a bug
that is causing your systems to crash, or add a feature that your
users or customers desperately need the vendor can have you thrown
in jail.
If Red Hat's CEO has to stoop to such sensationalism to sell Open
Source, I am very saddened. If this is Red Hat leadership of the
Open Source world, we don't need it.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Zend at PHP
congress |
| Have you ever seen the Kurosawa film Rashomon?
Its a gorgeous
black and white samurai film, a rape and murder trial retold
multiple times through the view-points of four witnesses, each told
so sincerely that at the end the viewer is thoroughly confused about
what actually took place.
Well Zend has come up with it's own very positive
version of what happened at the recent PHP Congress in Germany.
Kristian Köhntopp has a different
opinion.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Measuring PHP, ASP, JSP and
CFM Popularity |
| One of the nice features of the AltaVista and Northern Light
search engines is that you can search for words in a URL using the
syntax url:<word>, and it will give you a count of the number
of pages found.
I thought of using this as a crude measure of the popularity of
some popular web server technologies. For PHP, combine the url:php,
url:phtml and url:php3 numbers.
Lots of questions arise from the results. Very
interesting.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| COM
Functions in PHP4 (Windows) |
| The built-in COM functionality of PHP4 is quite attractive
for some of us programming in the win32 environment. So far, there
is not much documentation on the subject. This short article will
explain how to use COM in real PHP4 programming with three examples
using MS office 2000 Word and Excel programs and the Adobe Distiller
program.
A nice article at PHPBuilder by Alain Samoun, a regular
visitor to this Web site.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Internet
Traffic Report |
Your Internet surfing safari may be smooth today, but perhaps
you can't reach Yahoo or a few web sites in Europe. This web site
will tell you if those regions of the Internet are currently slowed
down. By checking the Internet Traffic Report, you can determine if
your problems are global or local. 
The Internet Traffic Report monitors the flow of data around the
world. It then displays a value between zero and 100. Higher values
indicate faster and more reliable connections.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Introducing
IBuySpy |
![]() The IBuySpy ASP+
sample application was built to show how you can use the new
Microsoft .NET frameworks and ASP+ development framework to build a
full-featured e-commerce application. It offers all the
functionality of typical shopping applications including product
searches, shopping cart management, user login and registration,
even the ability to view and edit your own product reviews.
C# and
Visual
Basic.NET source code available.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Fault Tolerant
Database Connections |
| Suppose you have a main database server and a backup server. If
the main server goes down, you need to auto-detect it and switch to
the backup server. This tip originally by Michael Tanoviceanu tells
you how to do that.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| The Joel
Test |
1. Do you use source control?
2. Can you make a build in one step?
3. Do you make daily builds?
4. Do you have a bug database?
5. Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
6. Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
7. Do you have a spec?
8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
9. Do you use the best tools money can buy?
10.Do you have testers?
11.Do new candidates write code during their interview?
12.Do you do hallway usability testing?
What's your score? I got an 8.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Interview
with IBM's Linux Strategist |
| So when somebody says, "I want to become a programmer, what
operating systems platform should I learn?" the real question will
be "What second operating system platform you should learn because
if you don't know Linux, you don't know anything." You can learn AIX
as a second language, or you can learn OS/390 as a second language,
but Linux is your lingua franca that lets you talk to
everybody -- Wladawsky-Berger.
Thought provoking, but the analogy is flawed.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| J2EE Application
Servers: Ready For Prime Time? |
| "As an ardent proponent of Java, I am somewhat distressed by
the lack of maturity of these expensive Java products. I am sure
that these products have many fine features, as I was eventually
able to run the servlets, as advertised." By Robert Frantz at
Byte.com.
My opinion is that Java is vastly over-rated for Web
services. PHP or ASP are better solutions for most Internet problems
because it is easier to prototype and develop with either system.
Java may be better for million line programs because of
type-checking and better class support but this is not so useful for
the shorter scripts Web developers write.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| WebCalendar
|
| Installing a new application is just as much fun as having a
baby -- well maybe not so much fun, but nearly. You can't wait to
try it out. Maybe it will crash your server! Maybe it will install a
virus on your PC! Maybe it might even work!
Well my company has just installed another PHP application:
WebCalendar. We are all excited because it works so well, and I'm
the proud father.
WebCalendar is a multi-user calendar. It's easy to install and
has a nice layer interface where you can superimpose several users
calendars in one page. When you add an appointment for someone else,
it will email that person automatically.
Simply superb! Simply PHP!
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Simulating
Transactions with MySQL |
| Life doesn't have to be logical. We fall in love, get attached
to someone, promise ever-lasting love, and then we break up. And the
worst part is of course the breaking up.
It's the same with databases. We decide we like this database, so
we store records into it. We promise ourselves that the database
will hold our records for ever and ever, and then the database
crashes; now we want to strangle the database server...
This is where transactions are better than real-life love.
Transactions is a technology that ensure that if you have to update
multiple tables and you crash midway, you can rollback the data to a
consistent state just before the crash. Imagine doing that with your
loved one!
MySQL is the most popular open source database on Earth. The
current stable release, 3.22 does not support transactions, but with
a little bit of intelligence and discipline, we can simulate
transactions.
Read this if you like MySQL!
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Open Source Editor Control
Scintilla supports PHP |
| Imagine creating your own IDE, customised specificly for you.
Too difficult? Not with Scintilla!
Scintilla is a very nice editing control available on Win32 and
Unix (using GTK+). Supports syntax hiliting and code-completion for
many languages, including PHP, Perl, C, C++, Java, Python, HTML. You
can embed the control in your own application to create an IDE.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Linuxmanship: Selling
Linux HOWTO |
| "Always dress better than the customers" is the first rule of
sales. However, you should only dress one step better. Customer
wears jeans, you wear khakis. Customer wears khakis, you wear khakis
with a jacket and tie. Customer wears jacket and tie, you wear a
suit. Customer wears suit, you wear a little better suit. Not hard.
Very interesting article by Donald Marti Jnr.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Sun
Acquires Cobalt Networks |
| I have a friend who is the local Cobalt distributor. What
happens next for him?
Cobalt is one of the few companies promoting Active Server Pages
running on Linux using their Chilisoft subsidiary's technology. Will
the Sun acquisition change this?
And Sun has always promoted Solaris over Linux. Is this going to
change?
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Religion Belongs in the
Church |
| Do any of the following skirmishes sound familiar?
- Windows vs. Linux
- Delphi vs. Visual Basic
- vi vs. emacs
- Proprietary software vs. Open Source
- KDE vs. GNOME
- Oracle vs. SQL Server
In some cases, these arguments arise as natural consequences of
business competition. However, we cross the line into religion when
our advocacy is more closely linked to our own preferences than to
our business requirements.
I might also add PHP vs. ASP to the above list. Erik Sink
gets an Ave Maria for his thoughts.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| The Scoop on
PHP |
| Want a Cure For the ASP Blues? Delve Into the Dynamic Web
With This Popular Scripting Language. By Craig Knudsen.
Highly recommended to people who are just beginning PHP.
When you finish reading the article and start PHP'ing, I predict
you will grow up big and bright, like the boy below:
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| How is ASP+
different from ASP |
| Picasso once said, talent borrows, genius steals. So it's
always good to know what Microsoft is planning; they have some good
ideas too. Here's a recent article from ASPToday about the next
generation of ASP.
"While the concept of having HTML elements that execute on the
server may at first seem a little strange, as you'll see it adds a
whole new layer of functionality to the pages, and makes them easier
to write at the same time. What more could a programmer want?"
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| STOP
THAT! Double-clicking the submit button is illegal
|
| Have you ever had to fill out a form, pressed the submit button
once, wait a while, then pressed again out of impatience because
nothing has happened. Then you find out that you have been billed
twice for the same item...
Well this hot tip (click on link above) shows you how to handle
this problem. Javascript required.
Steve Moffat and Monte Ohrt get a sexy batgirl icon for
the tip.
Discuss (5
responses) (Join
/ Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Microsoft Linux Shipping in November
2001 |
| Overview
Microsoft Linux provides all the power of the Linux Operating
System with the ease of use you've come to expect from Microsoft
Products.
Microsoft Linux brings a new level of productivity to Linux,
without sacrificing flexibility, performance, and control. In
addition to features like My Home Directory and My Configuration,
Microsoft Linux contains greatly improved support for Web and
Enterprise development.
With Microsoft Linux Enterprise Edition, you can create scalable
multi-tier applications using our new Graphical User Interface
command-Line Technology (GUILT)?. Extend your productivity with
optimized support for Internet Active-XWindows? Technology and
built-in Internet Xplorer web browser.
Visit http://www.mslinux.org/ now!
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| MySQL wins Database
Benchmark |
| Just benchmarked MySQL, Microsoft SQL 7, Microsoft Access and
Visual FoxPro with PHP using the ADODB library. Read more
about the results in the above link.
ADODB version 0.20 is also out. This implements
Microsoft's ADO, which allows DSN-less connections.
Also updated the ODBC article to reflect ADODB
improvements. Now has an example of DSN-less connections using
ADODB.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| MySQL on
Windows, where are you? |
| For some reason, the latest stable version of MySQL for Windows
cannot be found at http://www.mysql.com/ Is something
happening at MySQL AB that I don't know about?
If you want to test MySQL for Windows out, you can still download
it here.
Note that this is a shareware version.
I have done some benchmarks using ADODB and the speed of MySQL
is fantastic. Twice as fast as Microsoft Access, and 50% faster than
MS SQL 7 for a select statement retrieving 50 rows. The only
database which was competitive speed-wise was -- surprise-surprise
-- Visual FoxPro. That's the reason why my company still uses FoxPro
for a lot of applications.
Of course this was a lazy test because all the tests were done on
my Win98 PC which had the webserver, all the databases, and IE5
running concurrently.
Discuss (1
response) (Join /
Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| PHP
class to control Microsoft Excel |
| Excellent! People are actually using COM with PHP4 for real
work.
This PHP4 class uses the COM extension of PHP to access some of
the functionalities of Excel 2000. The class has been tested with
PHP4.02 running as cgi with Apache 1.3.9 on Win98.
Developed by alain@samoun.com (GPL license).
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
| Top 21
PHP Progamming Mistakes? |
| Zend.com is publishing a set of articles on the top 21 PHP
programming mistakes. I'm sad to say that many of the programming
mistakes are a matter of opinion, and not substance.
The main point that annoys me is Serious Mistake No. 9:
Programming PHP Like It Was Some Other Language. Well I'm sorry
but I disagree.
This website is all about cross-platform PHP and being open and
trying things out. I may not like Perl, but I support Larry Wall's
idea that there can be many legitimate ways to solve a problem.
If I was a German and I spoke bad English, it's not a serious
mistake. If I program PHP in a certain style it is not a mistake
either -- it's my preference so that all my code follows a
consistent style, no matter what language I use (I have programmed
in PHP, C/C++, Javascript, VBScript, PERL, Python, FoxPro, and
several obscure scripting languages in the last 6 months).
If I had a group of ASP programmers who recently converted to
PHP, I would gladly tell them to program PHP in VBScript style if it
meant that they stayed converted to PHP!
I don't think there will be such a thing as pure PHP soon.
The number of PHP users is growing so fast that PHP can now support
multiple paradigms. Personal Home Page. PHP Hypertext Processor.
Object Oriented PHP. PHP shell scripting language. PHP as an
embedded language for MySQL. The list grows.
Let's be open and grow too.
Discuss (Join / Login first) Edit
permalink: #
|
|
