Brian Swan has a new post to his MSDN blog today with links to a few good PHP-based CodePlex projects that he thinks look pretty useful for the development community out there.

Admittedly, I’m interested in some of these projects [tagged with PHP] purely out of curiosity, but some of them actually look useful. I won’t claim that these are the best of the PHP projects on Codeplex (hence the question mark in the title), but here are some that piqued my interest and that I plan to check out.

The projects in his list are include PHP LINQ classes, Virtual Earth integration and the Zend Framework DB adapter for Microsoft SQL Native Client.

In this new post to his blog about an interface (SDK) he's releasing to connect PHP applications with Microsoft's Windows Azure resource.

As part of Microsoft’s commitment to Interoperability, a new open source project has just been released on CodePlex: PHP SDK for Windows Azure, bridging PHP developers to Windows Azure. PHPAzure is an open source project to provide software development kit for Windows Azure and Windows Azure Storage – Blobs, Tables & Queues. I’m pleased that Microsoft has chosen RealDolmen and me to work on the PHP SDK for Windows Azure.

The SDK lets PHP developers connect with the Cloud Services Platform and allows them instant access to the different portions of functionality including tables, logging tools, request type helpers (REST, Error, etc) connecting to the Compute/Store/Manage features of Azure.

According to this new post from Maarten Balliauw, the latest version of the PHPLinq tool has been released - version 0.4.0.

PHPLinq is a class library for PHP, based on the idea of Microsoft’s LINQ technology. LINQ is short for language integrated query, a component in the .NET framework which enables you to perform queries on a variety of data sources like arrays, XML, SQL server, ... These queries are defined using a syntax which is very similar to SQL.

Some illustrations are included - querying an array, performing a database query and finding data in an XML file. You can find out more about the tool and download this latest version from the project homepage.

According to this new post from Maarten Balliauw, the latest version of the PHPLinq tool has been released - version 0.4.0.

PHPLinq is a class library for PHP, based on the idea of Microsoft’s LINQ technology. LINQ is short for language integrated query, a component in the .NET framework which enables you to perform queries on a variety of data sources like arrays, XML, SQL server, ... These queries are defined using a syntax which is very similar to SQL.

Some illustrations are included - querying an array, performing a database query and finding data in an XML file. You can find out more about the tool and download this latest version from the project homepage.

In a new post today, Justin Silverton points out a PHP library that makes available the full set of features that Microsoft previously only had for its ASP.NET language.

Microsoft has released their AJAX library package for non-windows systems which contains a complete set of client JavaScript components that are included in the full ASP.NET AJAX installation. Developers over at Codeplex have developed a library that allows you to integrate your PHP applications with this package.

The code example included shows a simple client/server interaction with a "hello world" sort of message. The library that makes it possible comes from that's currently in version 3 Alpha.

In a new post today, Justin Silverton points out a PHP library that makes available the full set of features that Microsoft previously only had for its ASP.NET language.

Microsoft has released their AJAX library package for non-windows systems which contains a complete set of client JavaScript components that are included in the full ASP.NET AJAX installation. Developers over at Codeplex have developed a library that allows you to integrate your PHP applications with this package.

The code example included shows a simple client/server interaction with a "hello world" sort of message. The library that makes it possible comes from that's currently in version 3 Alpha.

eWeek reports today that Microsoft is taking the first steps toward extending its support for other scripting languages with a new project to ry to run PHP on .NET.

Known as Phalanger, the project reached Version 2.0 Beta 2 on July 30.

The primary goal of the project, released under Microsoft Shared Source Permissive License, is to enable full functionality of existing PHP scripts on .Net without any modification, Microsoft said. Unlike the original PHP interpreter, Phalanger compiles scripts into MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language).

The article goes on to talk about the project, the advantages it has over previous attempts, and where it's headed in the future. You can check out the CodePlex site here.

eWeek reports today that Microsoft is taking the first steps toward extending its support for other scripting languages with a new project to ry to run PHP on .NET.

Known as Phalanger, the project reached Version 2.0 Beta 2 on July 30.

The primary goal of the project, released under Microsoft Shared Source Permissive License, is to enable full functionality of existing PHP scripts on .Net without any modification, Microsoft said. Unlike the original PHP interpreter, Phalanger compiles scripts into MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language).

The article goes on to talk about the project, the advantages it has over previous attempts, and where it's headed in the future. You can check out the CodePlex site here.