In a new post to his blog Brandon Savage asks why some of the best development tools don't seem to be written in PHP.

Trac. CruiseControl. phpUnderControl. Jira. Bugzilla. These are all intensely popular development tools. And not a single one of them is written in PHP. Why? [...] Some might argue that PHP is a lesser language, and thus incapable of producing the results that Python and Java can produce. Others might argue that other languages are more mature. But the truth is that these applications don't exist in PHP simply because PHP wasn't previously capable of producing them.

He expresses a desire to work on some of these tools and to make them native to PHP, but several comments on the post steer him towards some projects that have already done this sort of thing including Xinc, ArbitTracker and sismo.

Brandon Savage continues his introductory series on exception handling in PHP with this new post to his blog. This time the focus is on methods for nesting exceptions.

In the last two entries we have talked about the concept of layer abstraction: that is, that exceptions should not be allowed to pass out of one layer and into another. So, when an exception is raised in the database layer it should be caught in the controller. But how do we go about making sure that exceptions raised in the database layer are properly recorded and processed, ensuring that we have error logging and don't simply silence our exceptions?

He looks first at general exception nesting then at extending the base Exception class to write more nested code (inside a class). He also touches on the nested exceptions that were included in the latest release of the PHP 5.3 series.

DevShed has posted a new tutorial today (the start of a series) looking at using the filtering extension that comes native with PHP5 versions to clean up any data the user might give you.

Definitely, one of the most common tasks that PHP programmers have to tackle during the development of web applications is validating user-supplied data. [...] The use of native PHP filters may contribute significantly to saving time and effort when it comes to validating input data. In this series of articles I'm going to attempt to provide you with a concise guide to how to use them, as usual by way of a decent variety of code samples.

He starts off by looking at some of the filters that are available and show how to use one of them in a specific example - checking for integer values in a given input string.

In this new post to the Liip blog Tobias Ebnother looks at Jackalope that's looking to bring JCR functionality into the toolset offered to PHP developers.

We initiated a new open source project called Jackalope. Its purpose is to bring JCR via Jackrabbit to the PHP world. [...] JCR provides a great standardized storage for hierarchical content and supports some nice features like full text search, versioning, transactions, observation, and more. Our main goal is to create a PHP Connector for Jackrabbit without using any Java.

To accomplish this, they're doing things in two steps. First, they've created a setup with the Java bridge (from Zend Server) to make the connection back to the Jackrabbit server and making writing tests to that API. The second step is to swap out the Java bridge with the Jackalope connection piece. You can check out the current state of the project on its Github page or come and ask questions of the team on the Freenode IRC network (#jackalope).

Juozas Kaziukenas (thanks to his work in the WinPHP Challenge) has posted his look at using the SQL native driver to allow the Zend Framework to interact with a MSSQL database backend.

Now some of these issues [that Stuart Herbert pointed out] are fixed, however Microsoft native Sql driver is still not used. [...] However, none of these is available in Zend Framwork. So my task now (because of Winphp competition) is to come up with something what can be used to connect to Microsft Sql database with the new driver.

He looks at how to set up two different options for a database configuration: with a PDO_ODBC adapter and an adapterNamespace setting to define the adapter type to use and the other with an MSSQL adapter type.

This new post on the PHP::Impact blog links to a Sun blog post about the MySQL driver that provides a more direct connection between your PHP instance and MySQL - mysqlnd.

Due to the tight integration into PHP 5.3 (and later), mysqlnd eliminates the dependency on the MySQL client programming support when the database extension(s) and the database driver are built with the support for mysqlnd. mysqlnd is not another PHP extension like mysqli nor it has an exposed API to the userland. It is a library that provides almost similar functionality as that of the MySQL client library, libmysql. mysqlnd and libmysql libraries implement the MySQL communication protocol - hence both of those libraries can be used to connect to the MySQL Server.

The Sun blog entry also walks you through the installation and configuration of a PHP instance with the native driver installed (with the upcoming PHP version, 5.3).

Kevin Waterson has posted a new tutorial today looking at a key part of any web application - the configuration settings and how they can be stored.

PHP applications come in many shapes and sizes. Some used locally from command line, and more commonly, for web based applications. More often than not, regardless of size or type, some form of configuration variables will be stored for global access. [...] Each options has its pros and cons. Here each of these options is explored to see which method is right for your application.

He looks at four different options:

• an ini file that can be parsed/modified directly by PHP
• an XML file slightly more complex, but still simple for PHP to use
• a PHP file with things like PHP arrays defining settings
• and a database with one or more configuration tables

Each type comes with some example code and format to give you an idea of how they'd work.

On the Internet Super Hero blog, they take a quick look at what's new in the MySQL native driver version that will be included in the upcoming PHP version, PHP 5.3.

PDO_MYSQLND is in the PHP CVS repository at php.net: PDO_MYSQL has been patched (PHP 5.3, PHP 6.0). Try out PDO_MYSQL with the MySQL native driver for PHP (mysqlnd). Its has new features.

They do a short recap of what the native driver libraries are all about and some of the advantages to using them. They look at some of the "memory tricks" supported by the driver and a look at the prepared statement and procedure support.

The Internet Super Hero blog has posted about a preview release of the PDO_MYSQLND and a connector for MySQL to Open Office that have both been announced at this year's MySQL Conference.

The post explains what each of the technologies are for and where they fit in most development. The PDO_MYSQLND functionality is a direct connection for the PDO libraries to connect to MySQL using the native driver.

PDO_MYSQLND inherits all benefits of the MySQL native driver for PHP. In addition to the shared advantages you get the first PDO driver for MySQL developed by Sun/MySQL!

On the PHP Web Services blog today, Sami asks "what's missing from PHP's SOAP extension" that needs to be added or corrected.

PHP SOAP extension is good to get started, to play around with. However, it falls much short in meeting the enterprise demands in the SOA era.

He talks about things missing (like binary file features and lots of security features). He also notes something that most PHP developers love about the extension - the WSDL parsing that makes it so easy to simply call a remote service without having to go through the pain of hacking through it yourself.