In this new tutorial posted to his site Cory Fowler shows you how to set up and deploy a CakePHP-based website to a Microsoft Azure instance.

One day Last week, I set out to get a simple CakePHP site up and running on Windows Azure Web Sites. [...] CakePHP is a framework, which means ideally, there should not be anything specific to get it working on any platform.

He includes a complete guide to getting the framework, a sample "web.config" configuration file (for the Azure instance) and links to some other guides to help you get started using Azure (like deployment with git).

Michelangelo van Dam has a new post to his blog today about the Microsoft Hackathon happening at this year's PHPBenelux conference with reps from Microsoft in attendance.

Even if you have no knowledge of any of Microsoft's PHP solutions you're more then happy to join us and see how you can build applications so they can be distributed with the Microsoft IIS infrastructures.

Whatever your reason, you can find out more about the conference and the hackathon over on the PHPBenelux website and pick up your tickets now (300 Euro for the full event, just 160 Euro for a partial ticket).

Bradley Holt has a new post to his blog announcing the Boston PHP Northeast Conference happening in August (2012) in Cambridge, Massachusetts:

I'm excited to be able to announce that the first ever Boston PHP Northeast Conference will be taking place on Saturday, August 11th and Sunday, August 12th at Microsoft's NERD Center in Cambridge, MA. This regional event is intended for PHP beginners, enthusiasts, and professionals alike.

The conference will not just cover PHP but also general web development topics with a dash of user experience thrown in. Three regional groups are hosting the event: BostonPHP, Burlington, VT user group and the Atlantic Canadian PHP user group.

As Brian Swan has mentioned in his latest blog post, the ODBC database driver for SQL Server on Linux has been released. This is a huge step forward for directly connecting linux-based systems (and programming languages) to this popular Microsoft product.

The first beta release of the SQL Server ODBC Driver for Linux is available for download! As announced in October, the "Multiplatform Team" (a.k.a. the "MPlat Team") has released a preview version of a driver that will provide first-class access to SQL Server from applications running on Linux operating systems. The team is looking for feedback on this release to incorporate into their production-ready release, so try it out and let us know what you think.

He links to a few resources about the release - more details, a link to download the driver and the official documentation.

Maarten Balliauw has a new post announcing the release of the latest Windows SDK for Azure for PHP, version 4.

The Windows Azure SDK 4 contains some significant feature enhancements. For example, it now incorporates a PHP library for accessing Windows Azure storage, a logging component, a session sharing component and clients for both the Windows Azure and SQL Azure Management API's. On top of that, all of these API's are now also available from the command-line both under Windows and Linux. This means you can batch-script a complete datacenter setup including servers, storage, SQL Azure, firewalls, ... If that's not cool, move to the North Pole.

He includes a few things from the changelog including service management API support for SQL Azure, package scaffolders and various performance enhancements. You can find out more about the release and the latest on the project on the Microsoft Interoperability website.

Brian Swan is asking for user feedback about the future of the Microsoft's SQL Server driver for PHP based on a post in the team's blog.

I want to make sure that his request gets in front of lots of eyes, so I'm re-posting his request here (below). Jonathan included some links in his post so you can learn more about what the team is considering for the next release of the driver, but he didn't elaborate on "Buffered Queries".

They suggest a few features and ask for choices on which would be the most important to you as a developer - Always On support, SQL Server Serverless Express support, Buffered queries and LOB streaming support in PDO_SQLSRV. To give feedback, send an email to the address mentioned in the post or on twitter/their forums.

On the Zend Developer Zone today there's a new post from Cal Evans about the SQL ServerJump In Camp that's happening near the Microsoft offices in Seattle. It's an event bringing together developers from 10+ projects all around the PHP community to work on PHP itself.

If you follow Microsoft and PHP then you aren't surprised that Microsoft is yet again getting PHP developers together to talk. However, if you don't pay attention, you may be surprised at how interested Microsoft is in PHP and the projects built on top of it. It is that latter interest, projects built on PHP, which is the focus of this week's camp.

As Cal points out, this isn't a typical get-together kind of event - the focus is on the code and developers are actively working during coding sessions to try to meet some expectations by the end of the week. The Zend Developer Zone will post updates about the event during the week including articles, interviews and podcasts.

Stefan Koopmanschap has a new post today talking about the latest contest being put on by Microsoft - writing an application with PHP on Azure - and why you should get involved.

So as you might or might not have noticed yet, PHPBenelux is organizing a new contest in collaboration with Microsoft: The PHP on Azure contest. The idea is simple: Build an application in PHP that runs on the Windows Azure platform. I think it's a great idea to participate, let me try to tell you why.

He suggests a few reasons including that you'd get to work with cool new technologies (well, the 99% of you out there that don't host on Azure), you have the chance to win some great prizes and, of course, to have fun in the process. Development's great, but if you're not going to enjoy it, there's not much of a reason to try.

Ruslan Yakushev has posted some quick instructions on how to get Xdebug, the popular PHP debugger, enabled in the recently released WebMatrix tool from Microsoft.

When WebMatrix is used to build or modify a PHP-based web application the debugging tasks can be greatly simplified if Xdebug extension is used. This post explains how to install and use Xdebug extension with WebMatrix.

It's a simple six-step process (complete with screenshots) that shows you how to enable it in your php.ini, test that it's working with a simple buggy script and configure both the location to the correct DLL file and an output directory to create cachegrind files.

Maarten Balliauw has posted a new announcement to his blog today - a new contest that Microsoft is hosting surrounding building PHP applications on the Azure platform.

The PHP on Azure Contest is a coding competition run by the PHP Benelux User Group supported by Microsoft. Windows Azure is Microsoft's Cloud platform with tools and support for PHP. Participate to win a ticket, airfare and hotel to visit MIX2012 in Las Vegas, a Windows Phone 7 or other great prizes! The contest runs from February 1st 2011 to May 15th 2011.

Participants will build their application, blog about the progress and talk about what they think of the Azure platform as they go. You must enter before February 28th and have the application completed by May 15th - the winners will be announced at this year's Dutch PHP Conference. Other prizes include an Samsung Omnia 7 (Windows phone), a Microsoft Kinect sensor for Xbox 360 and another Samsung Omnia 7 for the top blogger participant.