This Week’s Link List (April 29, 2011)
I’m partial to writing, so one of the highlights in this week’s list is the podcast Elizabeth Naramore’s 2010 DPC presentation on technical writing. Other highlights are Andrew Burst’s look at NoSQL and the Azure platform and my discovery of chat rooms on Stackoverflow. Lots more good stuff too…happy reading…
- Windows Azure/SQL Azure…
- An interesting look at NoSQL and the Windows Azure platform: https://geekswithblogs.net/andrewbrust/archive/2011/04/23/nosql-no-peace.aspx
- This is a phpmyadmin-like tool for SQL Azure: https://azure.mylittleadmin.com/azure/en/
- Ben Lobaugh shows you how to connect to SQL Azure with Excel 2010: https://ben.lobaugh.net/blog/813/connecting-to-sql-azure-with-excel-2010
- Version 5 of the SQL Server Migration Assistant is now available (which also works for migration to SQL Azure): https://blogs.msdn.com/b/ssma/archive/2011/04/28/sql-server-migration-assistant-v5-0-is-now-available.aspx
- Overview of the "PHP on Windows Azure" presentation at OSCON later this year: https://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/18382
- Make Web Not war is coming up soon…
- Make Web Not War is sold out! https://www.bnotions.ca/blog/make-web-not-war-hits-vancouver-and-sells-out/
- Does Microsoft really care about Open Source? https://www.webnotwar.ca/blog/open-source-and-microsoft-panel-discussion/
- PHP community news…
- A round up of summaries of the PHP Community Conference: https://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/16244
- This week, Cal Evans interviews Elisabeth Tucker Long and Kevin Schroder on Voices of the Elephpant: https://voicesoftheelephpant.com/
- I was there for this presentation by Elizabeth Naramore about technical writing. Well worth a listen: https://techportal.ibuildings.com/2011/04/28/dpcradio-technical-writing/
- Framework news…
- Insight into some of the recent work on Symfony 2: https://symfony.com/blog/symfony2-getting-easier
- How to remove style sheets in Symfony 1: https://www.leftontheweb.com/message/Removing_stylesheets_in_symfony_1
- Introducing the Yii framework: https://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/yii-php-framework/Jason_Gilmore04262011.php3
- How to enable CakePHP plugins on the fly: https://mamchenkov.net/wordpress/2011/04/23/disable-and-enable-cakephp-plugins-on-the-fly/
- Patterns and abstractions…
- This article misses the fact that, if you are running PHP on Windows, you can access MS SQL Server using the pdo_sqlsrv extension (which is built on top of Microsoft's ODBC implementation, not the deprecated dblib library that the mssql extension is based on): https://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/pdo-php-data-objects/Leidago_Noabeb04212011.php3
- Giorgio Sironi continues his series "Practical PHP Testing Patterns", this time focusing on superclass that extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase: https://css.dzone.com/books/practical-php-testing/practical-php-testing-patterns-50
- Tips and tricks…
- Simple object iterators in PHP: https://blogs.sitepoint.com/php-simple-object-iterators/
- How to avoid character encoding problems in PHP: https://webmonkeyuk.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/how-to-avoid-character-encoding-problems-in-php/
- A performance analysis of PHP's native array vs. SplFixedArray: https://blog.shay.co/phps-native-array-vs-splfixedarray-performance/
- A good reminder about using strict comparisons in PHP: https://www.rooftopsolutions.nl/blog/numeric-string-comparison-in-php
- Good "getting started" info for using the PayPal API via PHP: https://www.techfounder.net/2011/04/23/breaking-down-the-paypal-api/
- Miscellaneous…
- This takes 'being prepared" to a new level: https://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/04/working-with-the-chaos-monkey.html
- Did you know Stackoverflow had chat rooms? I didn't. This one os focused on PHP: https://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/11/php
- An interesting look at IE9 and Chrome and handling malware: https://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/ie9-versus-chrome-which-one-blocks-malware-better/3175
- Just for fun…
- Now you don't have to *be* smart, you can just *look* smart: https://jokeradar.com/2011/04/type-like-a-hacker/
Have a great weekend!
-Brian