In the latest PHPClasses.org post Manuel Lemos suggests severn reasons why TDD failed to become mainstream in most development communities. This is related to comments from an leader in another community about his perspective on the "TDD movement".

Recently the creator of Ruby On Rails declared that TDD (Test Driven Development) is dead. Despite he used to be a supporter of TDD as the right way to do software development, he finally decided to announce that he really does not agree that TDD is really the right way. Read this article to learn more about what happened and what does this mean for developers that support TDD or not.

He starts with a brief look at what TDD (test-driven development) is and a link to a ThoughtWorks video of DHH talking about his new stance. Among his reasons are things like:

• TDD is Expensive
• You Will Change Your Projects and Old Tests Become Waste
• Extensive Testing is Boring
• Many TDD Preachers Do Not Use it Most of the Time But Do Not Admit it

Manuel shares some of his own opinions on the matter, though, pointing out that he doesn't think TDD is dead. He suggests that it helps to "make you rethink" when developing and that your (and your development group's) practices shouldn't be influenced by outside opinions - use what works.

New on Dzone.com today they've posted the third and final part of their series looking at lesser known databases systems you might want to use in your application. In this latest article they cover eXist DB and Hypertable.

Welcome to the third and final part of the series in which we look at five alternative databases you can use with PHP apps you might not have heard of. [...] In this final part of the series, we’re going to finish up by looking at two outstanding, yet markedly different, databases: eXist DB and Hypertable. So let’s get started.

As in the other two parts of the series, they include a brief overview of what each database is and some sample code showing it in use (and what you'll need to install to use it).