Schema synchronization is the killer feature missing in phpMyAdmin! This feature can be found in some commercial applications, like SQLyog Enterprise for example. [...] However, SQLyog DST is not free and only runs on Windows. So, if you want to build the next killer PHP application, port SQLyog's database synchronization tool to PHP and open source it. People will love you for it.

He links to a few different resources including a blog entry on database versioning and an article showing how the synchronizing is currently done with SQLyog.

Part of PHP's power is actually found in the variety of open source (free to use) PHP based applications. I'm talking about things like blogs, web frameworks, forums, CMS' etc. I was just thinking, that a list of 'killer' PHP open source projects would be useful

There four on his list so far - WordPress, the Zend Framework, Drupal and Punbb.

To be totally honest about it, we've seen much of the good stuff coming out of the PHP world, in the last few years. PHP developers are leap-frogging ahead with regards to their level of skill and the quality of code they produce.

Howard Ship is the guy behind Tapestry which is one of the better component frameworks out there. In a post today he is drawing attention to PRADO which is a PHP component framework that is based on the ideas in Tapestry. I haven't checked out PRADO in a long time but it looks like they are still moving forward and making good progress.

Jackson also mentions the one thing that he really took from Howard's post, that he's "raising the bar" with a challenge that Tapestry will always be the leader in this realm, though.