The PHP Roundtable podcast, hosted by Sammy K Powers, has released their latest episode - Episode #30 - SOA and Microservices. In this episode Sammy is joined by guests Yitzchok Willroth, Sherif Ramadan and Samantha Geitz.

SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is an architecture that shifts our focus from one big monolithic web app to smaller connected web apps. We discuss what an SOA app looks like in the real world and how it affects our codebases, deployment & DevOps.

You can watch this latest episode either through the in-page video player or over on YouTube or check out archived episodes through the "Past Episodes" section on their main page. If you enjoy the episode, be sure to subscribe to their feed and follow them on Twitter to get the latest on new episodes as they're released (or to be a part of a future live broadcast)

In this new post to Reddit.com, the question is asked "Should I be doing just about everything using REST?" - wondering if their new applications should all sit on top of a web service for their functionality.

I'm pretty new to server-side programming, and actually started out with Python/mod-wsgi. From the ground up, mod-wsgi made a lot of sense. The server gets a request, you route the request. It feels like that's where I should start, so that's pretty much what I'm trying to create with PHP (a REST router - for learning purposes, I know frameworks exist). I'm trying to think of a situation where I wouldn't use a REST interface, but I can't seem to think of one (even for simple cases). Would it be safe to say that using REST is a pretty safe bet, most of the time?

There's some good discussion and answers to his question touching on things like Service Oriented Architectures, some implications of having a web service power an entire application (or applications) and a few comments with some personal experience.

A comment about SOA sums it up well:

You learn to write for your platform in the way developers/partners will have to, so you produce a good quality usable API which encourages development and consumption of your platform.

Luc De Brouwer has a reminder for web services developers out there - don't forget about backwards compatibility.

About a year ago I was asked by a client to update their existing web service because of some changes in the way they wanted to process their sales data. Luckily this client has always understood the importance of a Service-Oriented Architecture ( SOA ) since they deal with large amounts of resellers who need to access, edit and create data. All I had to do was apply the changes to their web service.

He lists the steps he followed when making the update - thinking about backwards compatibility, evaluating current functionality for use and possibly decommissioning older pieces.

From the IBM Online Training Center (DevX.com) comes a new article covering the integration of PHP into a SOA solution:

With its fast deployment cycles, PHP is ideal for companies short on skilled programming resources and/or facing tight time to market deadlines. PHP's features and benefits are so compelling it should be considered for your SOA solutions.

They talk about the PHP integration kit that IBM offers to make using PHP as simple as plugging in things in the right places and how that would fit in with a "Service Component Architecture" and "Service Data Objects". They even give a simple example of a SCA component that works much like a PHP class.

They wrap up the article with a look at some asynchronous messaging with PHP - using the SAM extension to communicate messages back to the server for common tasks (like putting text messages in a queue).

From the IBM Online Training Center (DevX.com) comes a new article covering the integration of PHP into a SOA solution:

With its fast deployment cycles, PHP is ideal for companies short on skilled programming resources and/or facing tight time to market deadlines. PHP's features and benefits are so compelling it should be considered for your SOA solutions.

They talk about the PHP integration kit that IBM offers to make using PHP as simple as plugging in things in the right places and how that would fit in with a "Service Component Architecture" and "Service Data Objects". They even give a simple example of a SCA component that works much like a PHP class.

They wrap up the article with a look at some asynchronous messaging with PHP - using the SAM extension to communicate messages back to the server for common tasks (like putting text messages in a queue).

Tobias Schlitt is officially announcing a new offering from the PHPers in the Dortmund area as voted on via feedback from others in the surrounding area - The PHP Weekender.

It's been a good month, since the PHP Usergroup Dortmund asked for feedback on the idea of a PHP introduction workshop in Dortmund. Because of the huge masses of interessted people, we expanded the idea and are now going to make a 2 day, 2 track PHP introduction weekend, including 2 workshops and a lot of interessting sessions about topics like "XML handling", "Enterprise PHP", "SOA" and "Shell scripting.

The event will be presented in German and will be happening October 7th and 8th at Dortmund University. You can get complete details about the event (and reserve your spot) from the event's main website.

Tobias Schlitt is officially announcing a new offering from the PHPers in the Dortmund area as voted on via feedback from others in the surrounding area - The PHP Weekender.

It's been a good month, since the PHP Usergroup Dortmund asked for feedback on the idea of a PHP introduction workshop in Dortmund. Because of the huge masses of interessted people, we expanded the idea and are now going to make a 2 day, 2 track PHP introduction weekend, including 2 workshops and a lot of interessting sessions about topics like "XML handling", "Enterprise PHP", "SOA" and "Shell scripting.

The event will be presented in German and will be happening October 7th and 8th at Dortmund University. You can get complete details about the event (and reserve your spot) from the event's main website.