// Domus Neminis }

Is PHP ready for the Enterprise?

Come on, tell me, how many times have you heard that question? No, stop counting with your fingers: they are not enough. Nowadays — just a month ago for example — we still have this question coming out every now and then.

I think the answer that can stop this question for a long time, let’s say forever, can be found in the article I linked above (which of course it’s the same thing I would say to anyone asking this question):

I think the sheer amount of large, complex websites (Facebook, Yahoo, Flickr) based on PHP, sheer amount of complex off-the-shelf apps (SugarCRM, OpenPro, CMS’s) based on PHP and enterprises relying on PHP for either their corporate websites or their internal systems – is a testament to the fact that PHP’s feature set is mature and that we should continue in the same direction.

Well, maybe it’s not exactly the form I would have used. I can imagine I would have said something like:

Please, just pay attention to the extension of this URL: http://www.facebook.com/home.php. Cheers.

My first corporate post @ Ibuildings

My first post on the Ibuildings’ corporate blog is now live: DPC 2009 Day 2. It is clearly about the second day of the Dutch PHP Conference 2009 I’ve attend not a long ago, and the article is basically an “extended version” of something I’ve already wrote here on my blog.

Funny that my official picture on the blog is less horrible than I thought it was

Building from scratch. Again?

Seriously, I can’t believe the trend of this poll. The question is

What PHP software would you typically use for an extranet type application (with user content, logins etc.)?

and (so far) 24 votes have gone to this answer

Custom built (with a framework)

not to mention those three who have voted:

Custom built (from scratch)

So, basically, people are telling me that for deploying an extranet application they are really willing to:

• design the database
• implement the database
• design the user management
• implement the user management
• design the content management
• implement the content management
• [design/implement anything necessary - usually different content types and users interaction models]

All this, with the burden of thinking about CRUD, Forms, and tons of other annoying and repetitive problems already solved by a Content Management Framework (not System, Framework) such as Drupal (or something equivalent, if it exists).

At the end of the day, 24 people are stating that they prefer to spend months solving well-solved problems once again in their life, to deliver a poorer and, almost certainly, more buggy, ad-hoc and — very likely — inflexible application; instead of spending weeks focusing on the customization and improvement of a powerful platform in order to match every single detail of the customer’s needs, ending up with a high quality, flexible, extensible application, with a much lower risk of critical bugs.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Me at DPC ’09

Well, not really at the conference. It’s the Ibuildings party on the conference first day’s evening. Beer, BBQ, and good chats.
And yet another horrible photo of myself

DPC ’09 – My favourite talks

A couple of days ago the DPC ’09 ended and I must say that has been a good time. Nice people to talk to and some interesting talks. Here there are my favourite ones:

• All the Little Pieces: Distributed systems with PHP
• What are you talking about? Document classification in PHP
• PHP Compiler Internals
• Trees in the Database: advanced data structures

The talks are listed in a chronological order, from the first I’ve attended to the last one. Some quick comments about them: the first talk, from Andrei Zmievski, was well presented and full of information: at some point he was panting not to run late The second one from Ian Barber (my colleague at Ibuildings) was about one of my favourite disciplines and the tradeoff between the academic notions and the practical PHP approach was very good! The third one was from Sebastian Bergmann and has been nice to see some good stuff studied years ago related to something I use every day. The last (but not the least) one was from Lorenzo Alberton (another colleague of mine): another talk that surely differs from the rest; interesting informations about alternative ways to represent trees structure and how to deal with them in an RDBMS.

To conclude, I’ve attended other two talks but I didn’t like them and don’t bother tell you which they are (but you can find all the talks from the DPC ’09 here). I did like, however, the keynote from Andrei: PHP: People, Code, Ideas.

Dutch PHP Conference 2009

Ok, guys. I’d like to spend more words about this but time is a hard master, so I’ll put this simple. In nearly two months the Dutch PHP Conference will take place in Amsterdam, organized as usual by Ibuildings, the company I’m currently working for.

This is for all PHP professionals out there: the DPC targets an advanced audience, that is all those people involved in the enterprise PHP development. You will have the chance to enjoy speakers as well as other professionals like you from all around the world.

And if you want to save money, only for the month of April, you can save up to 100€ on the ticket.

I hope to see as many of you as possible there!

echo “techPortal”;

What’s techPortal? Well, it the first publicly visible piece of the PCE initiative from Ibuildings.

PCE – PHP Centre of Expertise – is an initiative to spread and promote the professional use of PHP, and techPortal is basically a technical blog where you can find specialized articles mainly written by the Ibuildings PHP Engineers.

The editor in chief of techPortal is Cal Evans, and the first technical post of the blog is by Lorna Mitchell: Getting Started with Memcached.

Enjoy and don’t forget: if you like techPortal, subscribe the RSS feed.