Despite opinions from some of the PHP community, interoperability between PHP applications isn't is such a bad state - at least According to Aaron Wormus:

The fact of the matter is that it's not such a big deal. Porting a plugin from Wordpress to Serendipity is usually trivial, and as we see more web-services based plugins (stuff like the awesome askimet) the task becomes simpler and simpler.

Interoperability is overrated, the more you think of it the more complex it gets. As you start throwing in new factors into the equation (how will this interoperate with a java/c# application) you start to develop monsters like JSR 170 which solve a lot of problems on paper, but in reality are too unwieldy to be truly useful.

He even lists out some of his "steps to interoperability" to help speed things along (like "use as much abstract code as possible" and "use services").

Davey Shafik has posted another update on his web services component he's working up for the Zend Framework, the Zend_Service_Server.

I have been working closely with Matthew Weier O'Phinney for the last week on bringing my Zend_Service_Server proposal to fruition.

There have been several changes, but the core has not moved too far. Matthew, Andi and I have decided that we will first implement the different server/client libraries.

He lists the libraries they'll need to tackle first and talks about an "exercise" he did to work up a JSON server component that works in a similar fashion.

Edin Kadribasic has posted the latest release of his helpful little patch for anyone needing the client libraries for MySQL on Windows - the version for PHP 4.4.3 and MySQL 5.0.22 libraries.

After the final release of PHP 4.4.3 here are the Windows binaries who need PHP compiled against newer version of MySQL libs.

The archive contains two files. Both of these files should be dropped in your existing php-4.4.3 install folder overwritting php4ts.dll and adding libmysql.dll.

You can download the file directly from here.

If you're caught using PHP4 on Windows and have been seeing some issues with the older MySQL libraries you've been using lately, it might be time to upgrade. "But I can't move away from PHP4," you say. No worries - this new post from Edin Kadribaaic should have the answer you're looking for.

Since the main PHP 4 distribution cannot be updated with the latest MySQL libs for various reasons, I will provide downloads of the latest PHP 4 with the latest MySQL libs.

His archive contains two files, both DLLs to replace the MySQL libraries that already exist.

Ilia Alshanetsky has posted a quick note about building PHP with cURL/HTTP support combined with adding a MySQL extension. Conflicts can happen with some of the libraries, and he knows how to solve it.

The MySQL binaries found on mysql.com are built against yaSSL as opposed to the more common openssl against which libcurl (usede by cURL and HTTP extensions) is linked. The conflict between the two libraries causes curl initialization of the SSL layer to fail preventing startup of the PHP extensions.

The fix? To either use the older mysqlclient libraries or manually compile MySQL yourself against the OpenSSL libraries.

Cameron Olthuis wants to share the tools that he finds th emost useful with the entire web, so he's posted them here on his blog.

His list includes libraries from all different technologies, not just PHP. Several are Javascript-related, but it's always good to have a complete toolkit on hand when trying to tackle some of the more difficult things.

Included in his list are things like:

• Moo.fx - a Javascript effects library
• Swat - an open source web application toolkit
• PEAR - the PHP package repository
• Mochikit - lightweight Javascript library

Be sure to check out the post and its comments for more great resources!

In this new post on RelativeSanity.com today, J Barrett talks about "the problem with PHP", specifically that its "sucks" because PHP itself is a sort of framework started on top of a series of Perl libraries.

He comments, using this blog post from snook.ca as a starting point, about the main reason frameworks "suck" - they're like learning a whole other language. He notes that PHP (and its frameworks) are so popular because of its low entry barrier, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing in the long run.

One struggle seems to come up over and over again for several PHP developers out there - Oracle issues. Newsgroups and message boards are filled with questions and, sometimes, a few answers. bshensky is one such user - but one that found a way to get the PEAR DB package to connect to Oracle simply and without the usual recompile it would take to get the Oracle drivers successfully installed.

The document claimed that you could use PDO to load a database driver on the fly without the need for a recompile. All bshensky saw left to do was getting PDO installed (via PEAR) and getting it to pick up on the Oracle libraryes to help make the connection. A few quick commands and environment variables later, he had a complete and working PHP install with Oracle functionality called on the fly.

In a new post on his blog, Wez Furlong shares some of the materials from a presentation he gave at the PHP Con West back in 2003 on the topic of "Extending PHP".

The talk [PDF] covers the creation of a sample DNS resolving library to extend the functionality already in PHP, and includes some of the code examples (in PHP) to show how it all works. This is followed by the C code to build the extension, defining each of the functions, and geting it up and running.