There's a new article (linked to by PHPEverywhere) that is a comparison between several of the database systems out there on the market. A Structured Comparison Of OSDBs (with three parts - Part 2, Part 3) covers tons of the major players out there, with everything from Interbase and MiniSQL to the old standbys, MySQL and PostgreSQL. Mainly, they just provide a lot of info about them all, such as fees, sponsors and info about the different versions.

Although it's not exactly a PHP-related article, the latest post over on DevArticles is an interesting read. The article, XML Strengths and Weaknesses with DOM, ASP & XSL, talks a lot more about what XML can really be used for and what some of the key terms are. They follow this up with a non-PHP example (ASP shudder) on parsing and all, but the idea is there.

Now, I know that several of you out there, when you hear the term "Flash" you immediadely recoil in fear and disgust - no one can make a good page with Flash! But trust me, there are some really cool apps out there that use Flash and backend scripts to do some amazing things. And, to make it easier on the developers out there, Macromedia is releasing Flash MX. In case you're not really a Flash user, check out this Tour of Features and see what all there is to see. They really have made some nice improvements on this that would make coming up with a nice, slick interface easier than you'd think.