Even though a lot of crap applications have been written in PHP, some applications really shine in excellence. Not only are they very usable, they are also coded well, secure, and well-documented. I've compiled a list of applications for a number of genres that stand out in my opinion.

Included in his list are applications like:

• phpMyAdmin for database administration
• JpGraph for graphing and statistics
• Smarty for templating
• Drupal for community and content management

I'm happy to announce that Adobe will be sponsoring the Zend / PHP Conference and Expo in San Jose in late October. I have a speaking session there on Rich Internet Applications, and we'll have a booth where we'll be showing off integrating PHP, using open source tools such as AMFPHP or WebORB from the Midnight Coders.

He also reminds potential conference-goers that the Early Bird discount is still in effect (until September 15th - just two more days!) to get the dicsounted price. Head over and register today!

When people mention IBM, the most common mental picture is huge corporate IT. (that and Avery Books starring back at me from my TV demanding to know where the flying cars are) Their reputation for large IT projects borders on legendary. So prevalent is this mental picture that many people lose sight of the fact that IBM has been quietly innovating for the past 20 years.

I was recently blessed with the opportunity to slip below the blue veneer. It was far from the corporate cube farm mentality I expected. What I found was interesting, it was fresh; yes, I'll say it, it was innovative.

They talk mostly about the QEDWiki technology - an interface to web applications (which can use PHP) to be a "mashup enabler" for developers. They cover what it is and how it'll help the web in general, and include a mention of IBM's demo site for the project (for a fictional hardware store).

PHP 5 was released in July 2004. Since its release two years ago, there has been a lot of talk about its adoption rate and whether it will surpass the PHP 4 installed base. No doubt that it will still take some time for PHP 5 to reach PHP 4's existing installed base. The main reason for this are the numerous PHP 4-based applications that were built over the years, and if it's not broken, don't fix it.

He includes a graph showing the adoption of both PHP4 and PHP5 versions, noting a large increase from the release of the 5.1 version of PHP.

Although I knew many were waiting for PHP 5.1 before upgrading, its release in last November seems to have created a huge increase in PHP 5 adoption. In July over 74% of support tickets were by customers using PHP 5 (and remember we do support both versions).

First off, the book - "Developing PHP Applications for IBM Data Servers". Cal talks about its contents, including a brief description and a listing of te chapters. Topics covered include the installation and configuration, wokring with DB2/Informix, and an introduction to Service Data Objects for PHP.

Next up is Cal's announcement of the official melding of DB2 and PHP on the i5/OS platform. He points to a tutorial ("Use PHP scripts to access DB2 UDB for iSeries data with Zend Core for i5/OS") for an example of these connections.

Finally, Cal wraps it all up with another example from the Zend site that "illustrates features and functions using the db2 extensions in the Zend Core for i5/OS PHP engine".

PHP template engines have always been an hot topic. I guess it is accurate to say there are hundreds of PHP classes and scripts that implement template engines. Smarty is by far the most popular PHP template engine. I suppose it is fair to say that the history of PHP template engine can be split in "before Smarty" and "after Smarty".

This book was written having in mind two types of audience: the Web page designers and the Web application programmers. After a couple of introductory chapters, there are several chapters written for Web page designers followed by several chapters more for Web application programmers.

He goes on to describe the structure of the book, how it compares Smarty to other templating systems, an introduction to using Smarty, and a few chapters diving more into the topic in depth. Overall, his comments are positive, and he definitely recommends the book to anyone looking to get into this popular templating system.

They start with links to the downloads for AMFPHP, and mention to "just follow the instructions" to get it set up. They provide a "create database" string to feed into MySQL before getting into the actual code for the application. The functionality grabs the list of users from the database table and stores it where the Flex interface can get to it.

The next step - generating the interface - is a simple one. They provide the code to cut and paste in to display all of the information the previous script had pulled out (in a datagrid).

Finally, they pull it all together, using the AMFPHP library to bridge the gap between the PHP script and the Flex interface, pushing the data into the Flex application.

He also mentions the book that he (and Alison Holloway) have been working on, the "Underground PHP and Oracle Manual", and it's preliminary release. Attendees for the installfest have already recieved early drafts.

If you haven't gotten your tickets for the event yet, you can still head over to the main conference site and grab your tickets today! The conference is June 14th-16th at the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan, NY and tickets start at $395 USD.

You can check out the online version of the book here as a PDF file. There's also some additional materials to suppliment it.

They discuss a range of authentication types - all the way from simple authentication out to cryptographic and multi-factor authentication. They wrap it up with a look at how you can choose the appropriate authentication methods for your applications as well.

I've seen several sites moving more and more to the next step up from the basic level of authentication up to even just the multi-factor. The more levels of security you can put on your application the better, especially if you're housing any kind of personal data about your users.