Following up on his previous post about transaction-level isolation with the SQL Server driver, Brian Swan has this new look at an additional option - snapshot isolation.

I'll cover the snapshot isolation level in this post, and (as in my earlier post) I'll look at what happens at the database level when using a particular isolation level (rather than concentrating on PHP data access code).

He introduces snapshots for those not familiar with them - the idea of making a set of data available to other users without having to lock the database in a certain state (also called row versioning). He shows how to turn on the isolation functionality and set it to work with a transaction. With the snapshot created, he shows the SQL needed to fetch the snapshot of data and, of course, how to read it in PHP with the help of the SQL Server driver.

In a recent post to his blog Johannes Schluter talks about a new feature that's just been added to the PHP project's trunk - array dereferencing.

Now you might wonder what this typical short entry means. when doing OO-style PHP you might make use of a syntax feature which one might call "object dereferencing". [...] So one can chain method calls or property access. Now for a long time people requested the same thing for array offset access. This was often rejected due to uncertainties about memory issues, as we don't like memory leaks. But after proper evaluation Felipe committed the patch.

This new feature allows you to return an array from a method and reference it in a new way outside the call - foo()[2] - where the array is like "array(1,2,3)". Johannes includes a few other examples, including how to set the information in an array (using referneces) inside a method.

Daniel Cousineau has posted briefly about a relatively new addition to the feature set of the upcoming PHP 5.3 release - closures.

I'm fairly excited because as of only a week or so ago I found the closures rfc, and not only did I find that the rfc has a working patch, apparently it's already in PHP 5.3. You see, apparently it's not good enough that we get name spaces and late static binding, oh no, we get closures too!

He downloaded a snapshot and gave it a try - code examples are included with his post.

Johannes Schluter recommends that, this Easter, you not only enjoy the holiday and hunt some eggs but also do a little bug hunting at the same time:

Around Easter there are different holidays, in Germany for instance Friday and Monday are holidays. This gives you some time without annoying customers and colleagues asking you to do stuff. So what could you PHP geeks do when getting bored? - A good idea is to test PHP development snapshots.

The PHP group has put out the second release candidate for PHP 5.2.6 and is looking for a few good testers to help them find whatever issues may lie deep in its code. Accoring to Johannes, though, not much should be broken this time. It's PHP 5.3 everyone should really watch out for...

So grab a snapshot and get testing!

Antony Dovgal points out that Derick Rethans has added the snapshots for PHP 5.3 to the snaps.php.net website.

Short list of what you can find there: Namespaces, __callstatic() magic method, accessing static members through $foo::myFunc(), fully rewritten ini-parser with .htaccess-like user defined ini files for CGI/FastCGI, improved OpenSSL extension, PCRE 7.4, and other fixes and improvements that will never get into 5_2 branch.

He recommends teching throughly before the major release to find all of the bug before the general public does. Builds for both source and Windows systems have been posted.

Padraic Brady has made a few updates to the PHPSpec software he's developed in preparation for the first stable release - additions to the reporting functionality to give as much information as possible.

PHPSpec is closing in on its first stable release, so the time had finally come to spruce up its output! No more the simple reporting of failed specs - now you get a few more details in a readable format, exceptions and errors even come with traces. In addition, I've implemented specdoc output as an option (using "-s") so you can get a list of specs in their plain text form.

He's also included an example of the new output in the post as well, showing the results of both successful and errored responses. You can check out the actual spec files on the googlecode repository for the project and get more details on the project itself (including the latest development snapshots) on the project's website.

Antony Dovgal has pointed out the updated packages that have been released to the snaps.php.net website by Derick Rethans.

He also includes a list of things that will be included in this upcoming release like:

• Namespaces
• Late static binding
• Accessing static members through $foo::myFunc()
• Improved OpenSSL extension
• PCRE 7.4

Grab your copy of these latest snapshots from the snaps website and get to testing them on your system to see what happens before the release.

DynamicWebPages.de points out that the Windows binary builds have been posted for the in-development version of PHP, version 5.3:

The sources for 5.3 are now on the snaps.php.net page as well as the Windows Binaries for testing the new PHP version. Besides the addition of name spaces, Late Static Binding and dynamic-static calls, this version also has mysqlnd a new native PHP driver for MySQL (as replacement to libmysql). This not only performs better than libmysql, but also is more resource-saving and can also be used more simply, since he does not have any external dependence.

You can download the snapshots and binaries from the snaps.php.net website.

John Mertic points out two new things today, one related to the PHP installer and the other to the snaps website.

No major user-visible changes were made for this release [to the PHP installer], but all the problems people had with configuring IIS and Apache should have gone away with this release. I've made some changes to the builder so that it supports an installer for PHP 6, which should appear on snaps.php.net soon.

The announcement about the snaps website is the facelift it's gotten to make things more like the main PHP site and a bit easier to navigate to find the snapshot you want.

In an effort to provide as much information and code about the PHP builds as possible, Edin Kadribasic (with some help from John Mertic) has created some new abilities for the snapshot build process:

Up till now we provided only the debug pack for the latest snap but several people have asked if it was possible to make one available for each snap that was provided on the site. The PECL bundle and the installer were not provided at all (although pecl4win site provides a build of PECL extensions).

As a result, he's generated and posted these packages for the latest PHP releases:

• PHP ZIP distribution
• PECL extension pack
• Debug pack
• PHP installer

He also makes a request to other PHP-ers out there for suggestions of how to include these builds on the Downloads page right alongside the normal PHP downloads.