I apologise in advance as this is not stricltly a coding question, but, I wanted to canvass as wide a spectrum of opinion as possible.
I have been using hte Zend php stack (among others) for some years now mainly because htey offer the best ORACLE support and they offer commercial support which keeps my corporate clients happy (middle managers just love to spend!).
However recently I have been hit by two gotchas in a very short space of time. Firstly they dropped AIX support with no notice (I checked the version I wanted was available, checked the right version of Oracle was supported etc. two weeks later I went to download and lo - no AIX version). Secondly I was installing in a Windows 2003 server and the install hung, when googled the problem I discovered several people had the same problem going back to early 2008 -- but no solution was forthcoming.
Is it worth bothering with Zend anymore?
Personally I'm not interested in needs of business circles, but I have a humble opinion about Zend as a hobby coder if you're interested.
I had a quite deep investigation about PHP frameworks lately and reviewed the most popular one. Of course, big companies chose Zend Framework because of infinite requirements.
If you haven't managed to look at this framework, do so. You will find a big mass of ugly code which planned to be perfect in terms of programming habits, but in the end, it. just. doesn't. cut. it.
Zend is shown as the PHP company. They might know what PHP is, but have no idea what a company is.
Related
I remember long time ago when I started to learn php there is a cms call xoops and it was very popular. later I went into java world and stoped paying attention on php stuffs.
but now someone gave me a 6 years old system they are currently using which is base on a very old xoops version (2.1). now almost everything I search about xoops are out date(before 2008), they did many refactors in the core code, so I can't even find proper language pack that woks with new version, and most modules only support old versions (below 2.3).
I have 2 questiones:
1- is there any cons which made people stop interest at xoops? can someone tell the the story? :D
2- the company use xoops as a portal, and they created many modules for their needs. do you recommend them keep developing new modules for xoops, o try to "migrate" (maybe remake) in other "modern" enterprise portals?
ps:I just noticed, Stackoverflow doesn't even have a tag for "xoops" this = no popular topic :O
Converting older XOOPS modules is not a big problem. We're just finalizing a Basic Module Pack, with all the modules utilizing the same Admin GUI:
http://xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6411
There is also soon a new version of XOOPS: 2.6.0, which is a major refactoring of the Core:
http://xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6415
As with most Open Source projects, since people contribute based on their available free time, the development might be sometimes slower, sometimes faster.
We are looking for a forum software we can integrate with our existing website. The most important thing for us is code quality and minimalism. Integration will be so tight, so we probably won't be able to update it in the future.
So far I can think of bbPress and Vanilla. Both have problems: the former is not actively developed (the last stable version was realesed a year ago) and the later one is very unstable (IMHO).
Any thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
There's MyLittleForum, which however is a forum software, not a bulletin board. Also you should use the still separately maintained 1.x version, as the new has more feature creep. The code quality is acceptable IMO. And you won't easily find a forum software which uses parameterized SQL or enforced input filters. (Been looking myself, Forum/Board written atop one of the big PHP Frameworks)
Does anyone know where can I find recent data on PHP4 vs PHP5 "market share", that is, what percentage of servers on the Internet have PHP5 installed?
I found this but it's from 2008:
http://www.nexen.net/chiffres_cles/phpversion/18824-php_statistics_for_october_2008.php
I also checked netcraft.com but I don't think they have something like that.
Thanks!
You can find up-to-date statistics in W3Techs: http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/all/all
Click on the versions to drill down.
When posting the question I forgot that I can compile my own stats which for me would be even more relevant than some global "market share" data.
I'm selling a PHP script and I have the site urls of the people who buy or trial my software so I can easily do an automated "survey".
Currently the PHP versions supported by the script are 4.3+. The actual distribution of PHP versions, however, got me surprised (pleasantly). Out of 176 sites that I pinged, 7% were running PHP4, 3% - PHP 5.1 and the rest 90% - 5.2.4+, which I think is quite nice for anyone thinking about developing just for PHP5.
Of course, my data may be scewed - my users are mostly based in US and are more tech-savvy than the average. Someone with wider target market may have different results but I think the trend is good :)
Oh, and it's worth noting that from 176 sites, precisely 2 (two) were running Windows even though my software works just fine on it :)
GoPHP5 lists the web hosts and projects that support PHP 5.2+
I've been contacted to see about updating an old legacy web application that was built using ASP and Access. The server is running Windows 2000 Advanced Server and I believe IIS 5.0 (I am trying to get confirmation on that, but the company isn't technical so I highly doubt Apache is running on the server).
What languages would be viable for updating this web app on the above platform? I've never touched classic ASP much less done any web development work against Windows 2000/IIS 5. There are no plans on updating the server to anything new due to budget concerns.
I'm leaning at the moment to moving to an SQLite-based database (customer isn't too keen on installing MySQL at the moment but I'm still in planning stages and this is a relatively low-traffic website) but what language would I pair with that? Does ASP.NET work well under IIS 5? Does PHP perform worth anything under this kind of setup?
I have a similar situation, did it about a year ago, and ended up using asp.net 2.0.
Generally ok, but the machine is showing it's age, I usually need to get someone to give it the 3 fingered salute every month or so, and it blew a psu recently.
If it's only low volume, you might be able to install sql express, which will make your life a lot easier than something like SQLlite, as dotnet plays nicest with other MS stuff, and there is a lot of labour saving goodness built in.
You would also be able to use the access to sql migration tools if you use sql express.
Would also suggest that you look at something like subsonic or nhibernate, which will take care of a lot of the boring and error prone stuff for you.
It really depends on where your experience lies, and how big the project is, if you've never used dotnet before, then start on something small, this may or may not be the one.
Apparently php performs well on win 2008, but as for 2000, never tried. Did have apache on a 2k box many years ago, but wasn't using php.
If the company is concerned with cost, I would be very conservative making changes. Concentrate on why they want to update- do they want to add new functionality? What are their mid-to-long term plans for the site? Are they having trouble maintaining the site? Going to a custom .NET solution may only complicate things further unless they are willing to make some ongoing investment in development.
If it's a relatively simple site, they may want to consider a platform like DotNetNuke. There are hosts out there that sell ready-to-configure sites that can do quite a lot with a minimum of configuration. That combined with a profressionally developed DotNetNuke UI template (TemplateMonster.com offers them) may be a good solution.
If they do want to go with a custom solution, ASP.NET runs fine on IIS 5.0. I believe you can run the .NET Framework up to at least 2.0, not sure about 3.0 or 3.5. Language won't make a difference to functionality, so C# or VB.NET are fine, all things being equal.
In this scenario, I would probably go with ASP.NET. Since you're running on a microsoft server, there will be plenty of documentation from MS on installing, configuring, and running the site. It's a lot easier to support something when all the components are "in the same family" so to speak. Asp.net will run fine under IIS 5. It doesn't have a lot of the security and scalability upgrades that IIS 6 does, but it will do the trick.
I was able to get a bit more information. The box is running IIS 5.0 and the IT guy handling it is more than happy to let me install whatever I need. From googling and responses below it seems like my best bet will be to convert the site to ASP.NET 2.0 with SQL Server Express 2005 running as the DB.
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I'm a Engineering student and I'm attending a Database and Information Systems class this semester. It's required that I produce a website/application that uses a database, using PHP/PGSQL. My questions are:
which IDE would you recommend?
does anyone have good tips and advices for a new developer?
it would help me (a lot) to develop this project attending some more "academic" aspects of the subject, such as the Entity/Association Model, etc. Are there any good tools to help structure my work?
Thanks!
EDIT: A few notes:
I forgot to ask one last thing, I tried installing BitNami's WAPP Stack. Does anyone know how good and/or reliable it is?
I'm actually working under Windows Vista Business (new laptop :S ). Would you recommend develloping under Linux for any specific reason?
which IDE would you recommend?
Anything that supports remote debugging. You will save yourselves hours and hours and learn so much quicker if you can actually step through your code. It always amazes me that more people don't use good debugging tools for PHP. The tools are there, not using them is crazy. FWIW I've always been a devotee of Activestate Komodo - fantastic product.
does anyone have good tips and advices for a new developer?
get test infected. It will stand you in good stead in the future, and will force you to think about design issues properly. In fact the benefits are many and the drawbacks few.
learn to refactor, and make it part of your development "rhythm".
related to this is: think ahead, but don't programme ahead. Be aware that something you are writing will probably need to be bubbled up the class hierarchy so it is available more generically, but don't actual do the bubbling up till you need it.
it would help me (a lot) to develop this project attending some more "academic" aspects of the subject, such as the Entity/Association Model, etc. Are there any good tools to help structure my work?
Learn about design patterns and apply the lessons you have learned from them. Don't programme the "PHP4" way.
I forgot to ask one last thing, I tried installing BitNami's WAPP Stack. Does anyone know how good and/or reliable it is?
No idea, but if you have the time I'd avoid a prebuilt stack like WAMPP. It's important to understand how the pieces fit together. However, if you're running on Windows, you may not have time and your energy could be better focused on writing good code than working out how to install PHP, PostgreSQL and Apache.
I'm actually working under Windows Vista Business (new laptop :S ). Would you recommend developing under Linux for any specific reason?
Yes I would. Assuming you are deploying on Linux (if you are deploying on Windows I'd be asking myself some serious questions!), then developing in the same environment is incredibly useful. I switched for that reason in 2005 and it was one of the most useful things I did development wise. However if you're a total *nix newbie and are under tight time constraints maybe stick with what you know. If you have time to try things out, you'll find it pretty easy to get up and running with a good modern Linux desktop distro and the development work will fly along.
This is probably the only time in your career when you have the full freedom to chose what tools to use, so make the best use of it. Learn some of the classic tools that will go with you a long long way.
So instead of using an IDE which you'll probably do all your professional life get a taste of using old school editors like vim/emacs. One advantage here is that the IDE will not hide all the details on getting your project to work, knowing the full technology stack is always a plus.
For any technology that you'll be using try and get a good broad perspective before diving in to the implementation details, so for PHP I would suggest getting a grasp of XHTML, CSS and Javascript including libraries like jQuery; Object Relational Mapping (Take a look at Ruby on Rails, CakePHP, Django and SQL Alchemy) and Model View Controller Frameworks on various platforms.
For PGSQL in addition to normalization try to get into the depths of information_schema and the transaction isolation levels and when they're useful.
Also important is understanding how the HTTP protocol works at a low level and how highly scalable websites can be built using HTTP.
Rather than relying on tools I would say that just create a reading list on the topics mentioned above and that would automatically structure your thought process to take into account these kind of issues.
IDE: I reccomend PSPad for its great FTP features and syntax highlighting for PHP
Tip: Go through the PHP documentation for mysql or whatever database you are using, the PHP documentation is the best tool you have for learning it.
Tip: Keep data simple, its always mutable to something else, for example, store time with unixtimestamp, since php has great functionality with the date() function to turn it into anything you want.
EDIT to add linux vs windows tips
I have developed on both Windows and Linux machines and i have both had a PHP server on Linux and Windows and for my type of developing (CMS's and Websites on those CMS's) i prefer developing on Windows and hosting on Linux. This is due to the stability of Linux and the Tools i can use reliably on Windows (Photoshop mainly)
I would recommend a plain text editor rather than an IDE. You should use one with syntax highlighting such as Notepad++.
Tips:
Use Firefox
Play around with some test databases. The biggest mistake made when teaching or learning databases is to focus on theory without actual data.
A good IDE for PHP is PDT, an Eclipse plugin.
My recommendations:
No IDE - just a basic syntax-highlighting text editor (I use jEdit)
Understand XSS and SQL injection
There are lots of good frameworks under PHP that will help
I recommend you netbeans .its free. it is available for all platforms, and mostly it is good for editing php, jsp, java, css, html, ...
Good for SVN, mercurial, Plus you can integrate it easyly with kenai.com...
it helps with the IntelliSense kind of pop up.
believe me, i'm using it for php development and its the best suited ide i can find...
IDE: Quanta+
tip: don't use a template library over a template language (PHP)
tip: MVC is a design and mentality issue, not a library
The best editors you get on windows are Notepad++ and Eclipse. both good, but can't hold a candle to Kate and Quanta+. for that alone, i'd ditch windows. Also, it's nice to have both the development and a real test environment on the same system, and even if most OSS is available on windows, they're always a square peg on a round hole.
ide: vim + (firefox+firebug)
using an ide with php, for the most part, is overkill
other tools: pgadmin3
design your tables so they are easy to query
if you have an extra box, i would put linux on it if you want to try it out. Ubuntu is a good started distro with a simple LAMP set up process. I wouldnt do anything to that vista laptop though, because it will allow you to test in IE and firefox.
Have you looked at Delphi for PHP (<http://www.codegear.com/products/delphi/php>) ?
Joe Stagner of Microsoft really likes Delphi for PHP.
He says it here: "[Delphi for PHP] 2.0 is the REAL DEAL and I LOVE IT !"