DevShed is wrapping up their series looking at benchmarking your PHP applications with the third part - a look at comparing execution times of scripts that can either pull from a database or from a flat file.

This large, complex subject offers numerous possibilities for experimentation, which means that you'll surely have tons of fun creating timing systems with PHP. [...] his article, then, will be focused on evaluating different scripts that fetch sets of records, first from a database, and then from flat files.

They use the Timer class they defined in a previous part of the series and wrap it around both a database class (pulling user information from a MySQL database) and a fetch to a flat file for similar information. General exceptions are handled as a part of the resource connection class.

The Developer Tutorials blog has a recent post that talks about manipulating objects in PHP with the help of the iterators that the Standard PHP Library has to offer.

It's a generally accepted fact that more readable code is more maintainable and easier for other developers to pick up. [...] Today I'm going to take a look at object iteration, most commonly found in the Standard PHP Library, and explore using the Iterator interface to simplify looping.

The main part of the tutorial shows how to implement the Iterator interface of the SPL to create your own custom methods, theirs being a Database version with methodsfor rewinding, reading and getting the current record you're working with.

On the PhPL33t blog, there's a guide for automating the creation of email addresses with the Plesk administration application:

In 2003 I wrote "Plesk Auto Email", the first fully funtional Plesk email automation suite. Now, I am going to show you how to do it. You will need a dedicated server with Linux, Plesk 7.5 and higher, php5, mysql5, and root access. This will show you how to code the auto creation, I am not going into deletions and edits at this time because I don't have all night to blog.

Included are the database table to store the commands in, the PHP script to create the commands (the integration into the other piece of software) and the PHP cron script that looks in the command table and executes each as it goes through.

The PHP Every Day site has just posted a whole new list of tutorials that might interest Zend Framework developers:

• Zend Framework Login: Creating Switching for Front Page
• Zend Framework Login: Creating Logout
• Zend Framework Login: Protected Page
• Zend Framework Login: Fatal error Cannot use object of type stdClass as array
• Zend Framework Login: Creating Authentication
• Zend Framework Login: Creating Form Login
• Zend Framework Login: Preparing Database

Check out their site (or grab their feed) for more PHP-related articles and tutorials.

On the Builder.com.au site today, there's an introduction posted to walk you through one of the most popular web-based database administration tools for PHP/MySQL on the web, phpMyAdmin.

phpMyAdmin is a HTML interface developed in PHP, for creating and managing MySQL databases. Before you download and install the latest version, have a look at the requirements section on the phpMyAdmin Wiki.

They look at the overall interface, how to set up users, making a new database, creating a table inside of it, pushing data into the table and the various options that the tool has to help you manage your database(s) - all with nice big screenshots to show you where it all is.

Hasin Hayder has posted another in his series looking at the relatively young PHP framework, orchid. HE digs a little deeper this time and looks at the Model functionality it has.

As promised, orchid comes with real flexibility which lets you design your application in less time. [...] In this installment, we will learn how to achieve maximum speed and benefit by using the built-in model library of orchid with a toppings of the active record library.

He shows how to connect to the database backend through the framework (along with some dos and don'ts) and how to pull this connection into the Model functionality. His example inserts information into a "comics" table and shows how to pull it back out (with a call to the find() method).

A little while back Matthew Turland posted an interesting item to has blog talking about what he calls the "odd triangle" of PHP, MySQL and Oracle.

In [an article from Maggie Nelson in a blog entry], she remarks on the article being MySQL-oriented and how limited MySQL explain plan support is compared to Oracle. I've had some thoughts in my head for a while that are related to these points, so I finally decided to, knock on wood, put pen to paper.

Matthew talks about things he agrees with (Oracle over MySQL when it comes to hierarchal data and set operators) and some of the things that can make Oracle, with all its power, fall by the wayside. This includes its licensing, the administration costs and some of the recent developments between Sun and MySQL.

The IBM developerWorks site has posted a tutorial (you'll need to log in) showing how to use native XML databases to speed up development time for your applications.

Native XML databases have grown in popularity along with XML, because data is stored as native XML, rather than through tables in a traditional database. Using a native XML database means that a change to the schema requires minimal changes to your code and no change to the database. PHP and Java developers can benefit greatly from using native XML databases

IT talks about how to connect to the database (in this case DB2), grab the XML data via a query and how to insert information back in via a web-based form. There's also an example showing how to make a "search" on the data and how to change the schema of the database on the fly as well.

Christopher Jones has posted a script to his blog today giving an example of how you can use the Spatial functionality of Oracle in a PHP application:

Oracle Spatial is a powerful library for adding location awareness to applications. This script uses the core subset of Spatial, called Oracle Locator, which is included in all Oracle Database editions.

His example connects to the database resource and makes a few example SQL queries: one that uses the sod_nn() function built in to the Spatial package to grab the store locations close to the customers, another that finds the latitude and longitude for a customer's information and a method for querying an object collection of locations in a given area.

The PHPBuilder.com site has a new tutorial showing you how to interface PHP with Adobe's Flex functionality and to use remoting to let them "talk".

They dive right in, throwing download links at you and working through setup steps to get your environment up and running. With that out of the way, they show how to get the demo set up that uses their weborb framework.

The end result of the article is a simple Flex/PHP application that pulls information from the database and pushes it into a datagraid for display.