Derick Rethans has posted the next part of his series of posts about the latest version of XDebug (v2.3). In this new post he focuses on the profiler and the new ability of it to compress the resulting file.

When making profiling dumps with Xdebug, the file size can not really be ignored. Even with a simple Drupal page a profile file is easily close to 1Mb. For each function call, the file contains the location and name of the calling function, and then a list of functions that have been called.

He gives an example of the uncompressed output from an execution of Drupal, showing the duplicate content when the same method is called more than once. With this new feature, XDebug is smart enough to detect this and make use of name compression to essentially replace duplication with a reference to the previous call to the same bits of code.

On PHPMaster.com today they've posted the second part of their series looking at combining a PHP backend and an Android application (by Matt Turland). In the previous article, he helped you set up some of the Android side to be able to reach out to a PHP web service. In this second part he gets into the sending and receiving of messages between the client and server.

Part 1 of this series focused on getting the Android application set up to make an HTTP request. In part 2, we’ll focus on implementing the use of data serialization and compression on the Android and PHP sides of the request.

He has it broken up into the different steps of the process:

• Determining the Data Serialization Format
• Determining the Data Compression Format
• Sending the Response
• Decompressing the Response
• Deserializing the Response

He also includes a section about caching the responses you get back from the server, an important step that can save you (and your users) some headaches and maybe even give a bit of a speed boost.

On Sftuts.com today Albert Jessurum has taken a look at Assetic, a tool included in the upcoming Symfony2 framework, as a means for compressing the CSS on a site. It's a simple four-step process and he includes each command you'll need along the way.

Symfony Standard comes bundled with a great library called Assetic for Assets Management in PHP 5.3 (CSS, js, and even image optimization coming soon) developed by Kris Wallsmith. We will be using it to compress our CSS files, thus reducing the time required to download stylesheets in our Symfony2 projects.

The steps are pretty simple (especially if you're at all familiar with Symfony):

• Install the YUI Compressor
• Change the way you call your assets
• Edit your configuration file
• Dump your assets for production

You'll need to have an installation of Symfony2 already set up and running - there's no steps included on that setup.

On the Ibuildings techPortal today there's a new tutorial from Rupert Jones showing you how to get the best performance from Magento with a set of technologies tailored for just that.

Following our earlier entry about installing Magento Enterprise, we thought it would be appropriate to follow up with some tips for getting more from your Magento installation. One of the major criticisms leveled at Magento is its speed; many complain that it is far too slow. In this article we’ll go through some steps you can perform to fine-tune your server to allow Magento to run more smoothly and more quickly in a production environment.

Among the technologies they recommend are things like memcached, mod_expires, APC, gzip and MySQLTuner.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted this new tutorial from Vikram Vaswani covering the use of different archive formats (like RAR, LZF and BZ2 compression methods) from inside PHP.

When it comes to dealing with different file formats, it's hard to faze PHP. XML documents, PDF files, JPEG images, MP3 media...you name it and, chances are, there's a PHP extension to handle it. And so it is with compression formats like RAR, LZF and Bzip2 - although these archive formats are far less common today than the ubiquitous TAR and ZIP formats, they are still actively used by many applications and projects, and continue to be supported in PHP via PECL extensions.

He pulls in a few PECL extensions to give PHP the power it needs, both for unix-based systems and Windows DLL files. He includes some sample code showing how to open up a rar file and list the contents inside as well as extract the files themselves. And, of course, code examples for compressing files into a new archive is included too.

From PHPClasses.org today, there's a new article describing the combination of a few technologies - more specifically Ajax, Comet, and PHP - to create responsive applications.

This post describes an approach used to implement highly responsive AJAX applications using the COMET approach. It describes in detail how the AJAX COMET approach can be implemented in PHP.

It also discusses how HTTP compression and chunking affect AJAX response delays, as well aspects that may influence the choice between Apache 1.3.x with mod_gzip versus Apache 2.x with mod_deflate for AJAX COMET applications.

Manuel breaks the tutorial up into sections:

• Multiple response AJAX requests
• COMET: Multiple response AJAX request implementation
• HTTP compression
• Page compression delays
• Avoiding mod_gzip dechunking
• Apache 2.2.x with mod_deflate

For each topic, there's a bit of explaination and some links to reinforce the ideas. There's not really any code, but he does link to various classes that can help combine to meet the goal.

From PHPClasses.org today, there's a new article describing the combination of a few technologies - more specifically Ajax, Comet, and PHP - to create responsive applications.

This post describes an approach used to implement highly responsive AJAX applications using the COMET approach. It describes in detail how the AJAX COMET approach can be implemented in PHP.

It also discusses how HTTP compression and chunking affect AJAX response delays, as well aspects that may influence the choice between Apache 1.3.x with mod_gzip versus Apache 2.x with mod_deflate for AJAX COMET applications.

Manuel breaks the tutorial up into sections:

• Multiple response AJAX requests
• COMET: Multiple response AJAX request implementation
• HTTP compression
• Page compression delays
• Avoiding mod_gzip dechunking
• Apache 2.2.x with mod_deflate

For each topic, there's a bit of explaination and some links to reinforce the ideas. There's not really any code, but he does link to various classes that can help combine to meet the goal.

The International PHP Magazine has posted the results of the question asked in their latest poll - "What is the Top Criterion for Scaling PHP?"

Of the six options they provided:

• Object code caching
• Template systems
• Distributed object-caching systems
• PHP variables that can be set
• Output Compression
• Other things that may help

one stood out as a clear winner - "Object code caching". Bringing up second place was "Distributed object-caching systems" and the other options coming in pretty close behind.

Be sure to cast your vote for their latest poll question - "Which is the Most Common Database Problem?"

The International PHP Magazine has posted the results of the question asked in their latest poll - "What is the Top Criterion for Scaling PHP?"

Of the six options they provided:

• Object code caching
• Template systems
• Distributed object-caching systems
• PHP variables that can be set
• Output Compression
• Other things that may help

one stood out as a clear winner - "Object code caching". Bringing up second place was "Distributed object-caching systems" and the other options coming in pretty close behind.

Be sure to cast your vote for their latest poll question - "Which is the Most Common Database Problem?"

The International PHP Magazine has posted the results of their latest poll today, asking the question "what's the best way to speed up your site?"

Options included:

• Reduce overall latency by reducing HTTP requests
• Save your images properly
• Strip extraneous PHP calls

With the option of "Miscellaneous thoughts" coming in at the number one place. The next step down was a tie between "Save your images properly" and "Reduce overall latency by reducing HTTP requests" with "Compression" following close behind.

Be sure to cast your vote in this week's poll asking "What is the Top Criterion for Scaling PHP?"