A "php-oci8-11gR1" RPM is now available on the "Unbreakable Linux Network" (http://linux.oracle.com/) in the Oracle channel. If you have the appropriate ULN subscription, you can use 'up2date' or 'yum' to install it and its dependencies (e.g. the Oracle Instant Client 11g RPM).
This new package includes drivers for 9iR2, 10g and 11g Oracle databases and uses connection pooling if it is available.
On the TotalPHP site there's a new tutorial showing how to pull data from your database and export it as a CSV file that tools like Excel can read in and use.
There are some occasions where you would want to export your site's information in CSV or similar text format. You might want to do this so you can view reports in a spreadsheet, or you might want an export of your product information to upload to a service like Google Products. Either way the method and end result are essentially the same.
The tutorial shows how to grab the information (via the mysqli functionality in PHP5) and formatting each row with the correct values in a certain order. Finally, the entire contents are echoed back out with the correct header() to force a download on the user's browser.
Chris Hartjes has posted the second part of his look at converting legacy applications over to a more structured CakePHP environment. In this new post he looks at working with the database schema.
Now you've decided to convert your legacy app over to CakePHP, you will run into the first serious obstacle: your database schema. To put it bluntly, if your schema does not already account for relationships between multiple tables you are screwed. Given that CakePHP is good at generating the queries you need to pull related records in for you, you NEED that schema to contain relationships.
He talks about the importance of relationships, creating his working models and some things to get well acquainted with - ow relationships work in CakePHP, how to use Containable behavior and some good SQL to back you up should you need it.
Jani Hartikainen has posted some food for thought to his blog today concerning models in a typical Model-View-Controller (MVC) setup.
"What is a model" and "Is Zend_Db_Table a model" seem to be asked once in a while on #zftalk. Frameworks say they have a full model available, thus they are MVC frameworks ORM libraries say they generate models. It seems the ActiveRecord pattern has become somewhat synonymous with model.
He points to a post from Padraic Brady on the subject and talks about how one might put it into practice. He admits to making a controller action just to get data from the database into a view, but offers a "more correct" alternative - a view helpers that creates a model instance your view scripts can use directly without the controller in between.
Justin Carmony recently put together a blog post looking at the biggest database design oversights that PHP developers can make in their applications.
I've thought of some of the biggest oversights I've had when working with PHP and MySQL and put them in a list. This is my personal list, and I'm sure some people can think of some other oversights that belong on the list as well. This list is just for PHP & MySQL, not PHP and any database. I know many people like using software like Doctrine to allow switching between different database types. That is beyond the scope of this article.
He includes a list of five - not having a data access layer, designing for only one database connection, not including developer logging, having queries written in procedural code and no separation of reads and writes to the database.
The Zend Developer Zone has a new tutorial posted today from Vikram Vaswani about accessing a database with the help of the MDBTools PECL extension to read from a Microsoft Access datbase.
In this article, I'll introduce you to PHP's MDBTools extension, which provides an API to programmatically read data from Microsoft Access database files. If your project involves working with such files, extracting database records either for calculations or for conversion to other formats, you'll find this extension invaluable.
He steps through the installation of the extension (via the pecl command line tool) and some sample code that grabs the tables, all of their attributes and how to select the data out from them.
On the NETTUTS.com site, there's a new tutorial that looks to be a basic introduction to the world of Object-oriented programming in PHP.
Numerous examples from robots to bicycles have been offered as "easy" explanations of what OOP is. I've opted to show you how OOP works with a real-life example, for a programmer. By creating a MySQL CRUD class you can easily create, read, update and delete entries in any of your projects, regardless of how the database is designed.
Their CRUD example not only serves as an introduction to OOP, but can also be an introduction to MySQL support for those that haven't used it before. They create six functions - the four for CRUD and a connect and disconnect. The full source is available for download too.
WebReference.com has another excerpt from the Addison-Wesley book "PHP and MySQL Web Development" covering the connection between PHP and MySQL using their example from previous chapters.
In this chapter, we explain how to access the Book-O-Rama database from the Web using PHP. You learn how to read from and write to the database and how to filter potentially troublesome input data.
The chapter looks at setting up the connection, choosing the table, running queries against it, getting the information from the results and using prepared statements to do it all in a bit safer way. They also briefly touch on other interface methods (like the PEAR MDB2 library).
In this new post to his blog, Brandon Savage looks at a few methods you can use to help reduce the overhead connecting to the database can cause.
Below are a list of my top five quick-and-dirty strategies for improving database performance in web applications. These suggestions are culled from recent experience and mixed with some ideas that I've implemented in my own code. They're not high level, but they are something we need consistent reminders about.
Here's the short version of the list:
Try caching
Reduce the number of queries that run
Use indexes
Optimize data usage
Avoid functions in WHERE statements
You'll have to check out his post for the full versions, though.
The O'Reilly School of Technology now offers a series of PHP certification classes developers can attend to learn more about PHP and SQL on a variety of projects.
The PHP/SQL Programming Certificate Series is comprised of four courses covering beginning to advanced PHP programming, beginning to advanced database programming using the SQL language, database theory, and integrated Web 2.0 programming using PHP and SQL on the Unix/Linux mySQL platform.
Another class will be released in December 2008 - PHP/SQL 3: Seamless Web 2.0 Integration . The classes come it at a bit under $400 USD and include access to an online sandbox for testing (complete with web server, unix-shell and database installations). Completion of all four courses earns the student a certification from the University of Illinois's Professional Development department.
